Clinicians need a diagnosis for common and not-so-common sleep conditions. A straightforward tool for common conditions is the Goodfellow Unit Short Sleep Questionnaire.1
Two lesser-known issues are primary insomnia (chronic insomnia), when patients spend more time in bed than they need to. The Australian Sleep Association2 has good tools for how to diagnose and treat this and other sleep conditions.
Delayed sleep phase disorder - those who prefer to go to bed late [after midnight] and get up late in the morning is the other less common issue; this is a teenage sleep pattern seen in 25% of University students. This group need melatonin at night and light boxes or sunlight early in the morning.
As published in NZ Doctor and Research Review
