Clinical Medicine Insights: Therapeutics

Insomnia continues to be a major public health concern and to have a pronounced and detrimental effect on health care costs, productivity, and quality of life. Efficacious pharmacological and nonpharmacological interventions have emerged over the past few decades, giving providers several options for addressing this disruptive condition; these are herein reviewed.

Benzodiazepines have long been the pharmacological treatment of choice for insomnia; however, novel hypnotics being developed by the pharmaceutical industry show promise in addressing insomnia with fewer side effects. From the nonpharmacological perspective, several different single-component interventions such as stimulus control have been shown to be effective, although a combination of these approaches (eg, cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia) also enjoy strong empirical support. Future research should continue to examine how sequencing of treatment components, treating different patient cohorts, and combinations of pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments influence patient outcome.