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Adverse Effects Of Drugs

            A very recent study on the perception of the risk of adverse drug reactions pointed towards a belief in the general population that sleeping pills hold the highest rank as a dangerous drug (Bongard et al. 2002). Health care professionals on the other hand ranked anticoagulants as the most dangerous drug, revealing a discrepancy between them and the general population (Bongard et al. 2002). This negative view of sleeping pills by people who were not doctors or another type of health care professional, is indicative of a deeper underlying problem in the health education of the general population.
             The author of the textbook Foundations of Physiological Psychology expresses one idea that may be an explanation of the general populations" attitude toward sleeping pills. He states "Patients who receive a sleeping medication develop a tolerance to the drug and suffer rebound symptoms if it is withdrawn" (Carlson 2002). In other words many people may worry that if they take a sleeping pill they will develop tolerance and dependence to it and in the end sleep even more poorly than they did to begin with. Though there is some truth to this phenomenon of rebound insomnia, there are several more recent studies that indicate that some available sleeping pills produce minimal rebound, and that even placebos produce some rebound insomnia which would indicate that the problem does not necessarily lie in the medication itself but just the actual process of taking a pill (Hajak et al. 1998).
             Currently, the most commonly prescribed compounds for insomnia complaints are benzodiazepines and non-benzodiazepine hypnotics. The drugs examined in the following studies included the benzodiazepines triazolam, flunitrazepam. The other drugs studied were the non-benzodiazepine hypnotics zopiclone and zolpidem. So far the newer non-benzodiazepine hypnotics appear to provide adequate aid in falling asleep and maintaining sleep as benzodiazepines do with a desirably lower incidence of rebound (Voderholzer et al.


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