Peculiarities of treatment of insomnia

Rasa Kornelija Marozaitė1, Kotryna Tarasevičiūtė1, Eglė Astašauskaitė1

1 Lithuanian University of Health Sciences Medical Academy Faculty of medicine, Kaunas, Lithuania

Abstract

Insomnia is a common sleep disorder among patients of all ages and one of the most common reasons for seeing a family doctor. Insomnia is characterized by difficulty sleeping at night, at least several times a week, a decrease in a person’s quality of sleep, or a reduction in sleep duration. According to epidemiological studies, a significant proportion of minors and adults suffer from various forms of this sleep disorder, and the prevalence of insomnia increases with age. Insomnia has been found to impair a person’s quality of life and normal psychological and physiological functioning during the day. The decline in a person’s ability to work, various incidents and the cost of treatment caused by the onset of this disease lead to huge economic losses at the state level. Timely diagnosis of insomnia and prescribed appropriate treatment avoids the associated psychosocial and economic consequences. In recent years, there has been much resonant discussion in the clinician community about appropriate and distinct methods for treating insomnia. The administration of cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of insomnia has been found to be highly effective, but often practically unavailable, and physicians have to resort to other treatments. Controversial views arise both about the benefits of alternative therapies for the treatment of insomnia and about the use of commonly used hypnotics or benzodiazepines in patients with this disorder. Adverse reactions and dependencies associated with the use of benzodiazepines and hypnotics are key issues for researchers to investigate the conditions for the safe administration of these groups to patients, the management of the most appropriate groups for each form of the disorder, and their pharmacological properties. In recent years, a number of studies have been carried out analyzing not only the peculiarities of standard first-line treatment, but also alternatives to pharmacotherapy with melatonin, antidepressants or antipsychotics. The aim of this work is to review the latest scientific publications on non-drug and drug treatment of insomnia, the effectiveness of its methods and innovations.
Keywords: insomnia, treatment methods, benzodiazepines.