HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 24, 2022 (HealthDay News) — 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. Use of these sleep aids dropped 31% 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 don’t have the potential adverse outcomes that some medications might have,” Kaufmann said.
The biggest drop-off (86%) in use of sleep drugs was seen among those over 80.
Before this new decline, researchers had reported that between 1993 and 2010, prescriptions for benzodiazepines jumped 69%. The drugs, which treat anxiety and insomnia, include diazepam (Valium) and alprazolam (Xanax). Over the same period, prescriptions for zolpidem (Ambien) rose 140%.
The surge was driven by direct-to-consumer marketing, particularly of Ambien in the early 1990s, as well as greater awareness of the benefits of sleep, Kaufmann said.
Since then, use of all types of sleep medications dropped, with the biggest decline (55%) in federally approved sleep aids.
For the study, Kaufmann’s team used data from 29,400 participants in a U