Sleeping Pill Use Grows as Economy Keeps People Up at Night

I believe the author, Denise Gellene’s intended audience was to the mid-aged group, in order to tell them about the effects sleeping pills can have on the body, especially the brain. Also, Denise Gellene wrote the article as a warning to young adults to not get hooked onto sleeping medication at such young ages because it could carry serious consequence later on down the road

Denise Gellene, a reporter and editor for the Los Angeles Times Newspaper and has worked in the newspaper industry for a total of 23 years. Denise Gellene is said to be a “Skilled communicator with management experience at a top media organization. Excels at translating complex concepts. Proven ability to work under pressure. Areas of focus: science, medicine, biotechnology and business and economics” (According to website linkedin). From this information I gather that Denise is a credited author.”

The article Sleeping Pill Use Grows as Economy Keeps People Up at Night, obviously, was about sleeping medication. It focused on (today’s) society welcoming it as a “normality” and everyday use, mainly because of economic reasons, such as lost jobs and instability in an unstable environment. Denise Gellene advocated the non-use of sleeping pills because of side effects such as next-day drowsiness, dependency, sleep walking, sleep driving, memory loss, sleep eating, and even death. “But some doctors are concerned that the heavy prescribing contributes to a false impression that the medications are perfectly safe.” Denise logically contributes statistics and doctor analyzes of sleep patterns, while informing his audience in a non-pushy way. He, in my opinion, stated his argument very well and got his point across clearly and in a well-written manner. Already having agreed with Denise argument before reading he persuaded me even more with the evidence, “Dr. David Fassler, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, said some doctors may be prescribing medications instead of treating the underlying cause of sleeplessness, such as depression or anxiety.” This has proved to be right in many cases, yet doctors and prescribers forget the patients’ first need and think only about providing short-term help and “goody-feelings”