Hi there, welcome back to the podcast. In the last episode on Insomnia, I described exactly

what insomnia is, what it isn't and what the different flavors are of insomnia. Today we're

going to move past this and we're going to discuss exactly how chronic insomnia disorder is typically diagnosed.

And I'll also tell you about how it isn't diagnosed.

I know that sounds strange to tell you about how we don't diagnose something, but I'll explain in a little bit. So let's get started.

The diagnosis of chronic insomnia disorder is based on a set of clinical rules.

And as you'll see, they are a rather extreme set of rules. Now it can be somewhat different in different

countries but in general the diagnosis of insomnia confirms the following three things.

First, you have to have an experience with difficulties

falling asleep, difficulties staying asleep, or not being refreshed or restored by your sleep.

And those things we discussed in the last episode.

The second aspect of the diagnosis of insomnia is that you have to experience these things, these problems in terms of sleep, for at least three nights every week, and then third third you have to be having those three times a

week issues for at least three months straight back to back.

Gosh, I've always thought that that's a lot of suffering for a person to go through

for really quite a long period of time before receiving a diagnosis and many of the

clinicians that I know I think feel similarly about that and the concern there is that it's such a stringent

criteria, it's such a high threshold that it ends up leaving quite a large

proportion of people left out in the diagnostic cold as it were.

Nevertheless, they're still having a really hard time with their sleep.

Thankfully, however, most clinicians and doctors that I know are incredibly sensitive to this and they're very sympathetic in terms of working with these rules.

But coming back to the issue of diagnosis,

understandably you may think that insomnia is diagnosed

...