Your article highlights the rise of melatonin on the black market among parents is an anxious reality: families are not left anywhere in which they turn when it comes to supporting safe and effective sleep (“I feel like I am a drug dealer”: parents use the black market for melatonin to help their children sleep, June 15).
Our report Dream of change: a statement of sleep It revealed that nine out of 10 adults in the UK are now suffering from sleep issues. About 14 million people may live with unjust insomnia, however one out of every six people with symptoms of formal diagnosis.
Despite the national direction of the Institute for Excellence in the field of health and care (NICE), which recommends the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT-I) as the first treatment since at least 2009, the face is rarely available on NHS. NICE also recommended CBT-I for more than three years, however this was not funded for patients at the national level. Without reaching active non -drug interventions, families turn into unorganized sleep tools from despair. But melatonin is not a solution for everyone-and does not carry the useless use, especially in children, risks.
Urgently need a national sleep strategy. This includes the national availability of CBT-I digital, CBT-I financing in every NHS local integrated care board, public health campaigns to improve literacy in sleep, and better training of the Global GPS (GPS), who often leave a great choice but to prescribe medications. Despite the known damage and guidelines that are recommended to risk, NHS data shows that more than 5 million medical prescriptions for sleeping pills are still written every year, and the number of children who have received these medications has doubled three times since 2015.
Parents should not rely on imported nutritional supplements to help their children sleep. Sleep It is an essential part of health, not luxury. It is time for the government to deal with this way.
Vicky Bevers
CEO, The Sleep Charity
