ABSTRACT
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a short-term treatment during which therapists who specialize in this type of treatment attempt to understand the source of the problem—in this case the mechanism that prevents sleep—and, together with the patients, to alter the thought and behavioral patterns that interfere with their sleep. The modern history of sleep-inducing medication begins with the introduction of benzodiazepines—at the beginning of the 1960s—which helped induce sleep and also reduce anxiety and were safer than drugs of the barbiturate drug family. The medical aim of sleeping pills is to break what experts call the “vicious circle,” a cycle of lack of sleep that feeds itself with irritability, sleeplessness, impaired daytime functioning, more irritability, and more sleeplessness. Many experts in the field of sleep believe that sleeping pills help people maintain a normal life routine, yet express reservations about prolonged use of sleeping pills due to the risk of addiction.
