Treating Insomnia in General Practice

Abstract

LS is a 13-year-old boy who presented with a one month history of difficulty in falling asleep. He was accompanied by his mother, who asked that he be prescribed some form of sleeping pill to solve the problem, because she was worried that it was affecting his concentration at school. DT is a 23-year-old gentleman whose sleep duration had decreased progressively over the previous three months, from 5 to 6 hours per night to a maximum of 2 hours per night. This lower extreme had now lasted nearly 3 weeks, and he felt that it was completely "wrecking" his daytime routine, with what he described as "very low levels of consciousness and alertness" throughout the day.