Treating Insomnia With Related Comorbid Conditions: Michael Thorpy, MD

WATCH TIME: 2 minutes

"Too often, clinicians will see someone who has a medical or psychiatric disorder and think that the primary treatment of that disorder will eliminate the sleep disturbance, but it usually doesn’t."

Patients with insomnia tend to have difficulty initiating sleep, maintaining sleep, or waking up early in the morning without the ability to return to sleep. They can also suffer from significant daytime symptoms such as fatigue, sleepiness, inattention, mood disturbance, or impaired performance.

In addition to immediate consequences reported by patients, insomnia also precedes or accompanies medical or psychiatric disorders and may occur as a response to physiologic or psychological stressors. Michael Thorpy, MD, board-certified in sleep disorders medicine, currently serves as the director of the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center and as a professor of clinical neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

In an interview with NeurologyLive®,Thorpy discussed the relationship between insomnia and other comorbid sleep disorders and the current knowledge gaps among clinicians that are impacting the diagnosis and treatment of chronic insomnia.