Black-market melatonin use points to the need for a national sleep strategy | Sleep
Your article on the rise of the use of melatonin in the black market highlights a disturbing reality: families find themselves with nowhere where it is a question of safe and effective sleep (“ I feel like a drug trafficker ”: parents who use the melatonin of the black market to help their children to sleep on June 15).
Our report dreaming of change: a sleepy manifesto revealed that nine adults out of 10 British are now experiencing sleep problems. About 14 million people can live with unmatched insomnia, and yet only one in six with symptoms has received a formal diagnosis.
Despite the directives of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) recommending cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) as a first line treatment since at least 2009, face to face has been rarely available on the NHS. Nice has also recommended the CBT-I digital cost economics for over three years and yet it has still not been funded for patients nationwide. Without access to effective drug -free interventions, families turn to sleepless sleeping pills by despair. But melatonin is not a catch -all solution – and not supervised use, especially in children, has risks.
We urgently need a national sleep strategy. This includes the national availability of CBT-I digital, the financing of the CBT-I in all local integrated NHS care committee, public health campaigns to improve the literacy of sleep and better training for general practitioners, who often find themselves with a choice of other than prescribing drugs. Despite the damage and advice known on their risks, NHS data show that more than 5 million sleeping pools are still written each year, and the number of children receiving these drugs has tripled since 2015.
Parents should not have to rely on imported supplements to help their children sleep. Sleep is a fundamental element of health, not a luxury. It is time for the government to treat it this way.
Vicki Beevers
CEO, the sample charity
