In a recent article written for Psychiatric Times, John Winkelman, MD PhD discusses the wide array of options for managing sleep problems based on his presentation at the 2023 Psychiatric Times World CME Conference entitled “Beyond Benzos: Treatment Options for Insomnia”.
“We don’t just go from insomnia symptoms to treatment—the shortcut. We ask a lot of questions about what the potential contributing factors might be,” John W. Winkelman MD, PhD, told attendees of the 2023 Annual Psychiatric Times World CME Conference. “We hopefully make a diagnosis or at least identify underlying contributors and address them. And only then do we determine treatment.”
Winkelman, chief of the Sleep Disorders Clinical Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, noted by avoiding the shortcut approach and making these careful considerations, clinicians gain a full picture that will better inform their choice of the varied pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatment options.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
John Winkelman, MD PhD is the Chief of the Sleep Disorders Clinical Research Program in the Department of Psychiatry at Mass General and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Winkelman's research has primarily focused in two areas: 1) epidemiology, physiology, cardiovascular consequences and treatment of restless legs syndrome, and 2) neurobiology and treatment of insomnia.
