What's your take or experience of the prescription of Zed drugs?

First of all, I think sometimes the prescribing doesn't always take into account the individual patient.

And what I mean by that is at the moment we have two Z drugs available to us in the UK.

We've got Zopaclone, which has a medium duration of action, and we've got Zolpidem, which is short-acting.

Um, and I think most patients who are on a Zed drug are put on Zopaclone.

Um, and Zopaclone is very good for getting people to sleep, for keeping them asleep, but you do run the risk of hangover the next day.

Um, and that's particularly worrying, for example, if people are driving in the morning, that it can impair driving performance.

What advice can you give for inpatient psychiatrists that would want to know what they can prescribe?

Mm-hmm.

You know, if the person gets out of bed, just guide them to the nearest couch or bed so that they can lie down and go back into full sleep again, um, and they will grow, you know, very often grow out of it.

If it does become problematic, there is a little bit of evidence for, for treatment in children, much less so in, in adults.

Um, in children, there is some evidence for the use of, uh, an supplement 5-HTP, um, and also doing something, uh, called preemptive waking.

And what this is, is let's say the person tends to sleepwalk or have a sleep terror 40 minutes after they fall asleep on average.

What you then do is you go in somewhere between the time they fall asleep and that 40-minute mark and just stir them, just wake them slightly.

Uh, you don't have to get them into full wakefulness, just enough that they kind of become a little bit aware that you're there, bat your hand away, and go back to sleep.

[clears throat]