Recent studies from Harvard University, researchers say cognitive behavioral therapy beats out sleeping pills for treating chronic insomnia. The scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School report in the Archives of Internal Medicine they found the behavioral and relaxation techniques appear more effective in the short and long term than the most widely prescribed sleeping pill, zolpidem, also known as Ambien.
“Sleeping pills are the most frequent treatment for insomnia, yet, CBT techniques clearly were more successful in helping the majority of study participants to become normal sleepers,” said study leader Gregg Jacobs of the Sleep Disorders Center at Beth Israel and assistant professor of psychiatry at the medical school.
Base on the result it has been suggested that CBT should now be considered the first line treatment for insomnia, which is experienced on a nightly basis by one-third of the nation’s adult population.
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