Doc Roldan’s Blog: Writing on Writing

A recent study shows that the use of sleeping pills is up 85% amongst older children and adolescents. The same study also shows a twofold increase of sleeping pill consumption amongst young adults. I previously wrote a blog about this study, using information by an article by Kim Painter of USA Today. The New York Times wrote an article about the same paper; however it was totally different. The article focuses on the negative aspects of these sleeping pills, explicitly stating that children should not ever take sleeping pills. The article suggests using other alternatives to “hypnotics”, including Antihistamines and other Anti-Depressants. Although the article offers good alternatives, it does not focus on the study at hand, and often skews the data. It does not infer any conclusions or trends from the Medco study, and therefore does not do justice as an appropriate informative article. / Neel Joshi