Fewer Americans are turning to sleep medications to fight insomnia.
After a dramatic rise in prescriptions for drugs like Ambien, the trend has ebbed, according to a new study, and fewer doctors are prescribing sleep medications. The use of these sleep aids dropped 31 percent between 2013 and 2018, researchers found.
“There are several possible reasons for this decline; for example, there’s a greater awareness of the potential dangers in the use of these medications,” said lead researcher Christopher Kaufmann. He’s an assistant professor in the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Florida.
“Also, there’s been a recent upsurge in behavioral treatments for improving sleep that doesn’t have the potential adverse outcomes that some medications might have,” Kaufmann said….