There are several misconceptions surrounding insomnia, ranging from diagnosis to treatment, according to a presenter at the American College of Physicians Internal Medicine Meeting, reports Healio.
The biggest mistakes clinicians make when diagnosing and treating insomnia are ”exacerbating the patient’s anxiety by overly aggressive, dramatic pharmacologic approaches and by giving the impression that insomnia is a dreaded disease that must be stamped out at all costs,” Barbara Phillips, MD, MSPH, FCCP, professor of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine at the University of Kentucky, College of Medicine, told Healio Family Medicine.
Insomnia occurs in patients who have a difficult time beginning sleep; maintaining sleep and waking up often during the night; waking up early and cannot fall back asleep; and have poor quality sleep, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Phillips said risk factors include being female, making less than $50,000 a year, depression, heart disease, severe airflow obstruction, pulmonary symptoms and restrictive lung disease.
