‘Dutch people take sleeping pills and tranquilizers for far too long’ | RTL News

The medications fall under the group of benzodiazepines, also called benzos, and are often prescribed by the GP or a psychiatrist.

Taken for more than a year

In 2023, a total of 125,100 people took the pills for more than a year, according to figures from the Foundation for Pharmaceutical Characteristics (SFK), which Trouw and the investigative journalism platform Investico requested.

In addition, 272,100 people took the medicines for more than eight months and 410,300 people took them for more than four months.

GPs are actually only allowed to prescribe a maximum of ten tablets once. The effect of benzos decreases rapidly, increasing the risk of becoming addicted.

Workload of general practitioners

The guideline of the Dutch Society of General Practitioners (NHG) states that doctors must tackle ‘chronic use’, the newspaper writes. But the GP is only obliged to discuss tapering with his patient if benzos have been taken for more than sixty days in three months.

It is expected that these conversations will often not happen, because general practitioners are faced with enormous workloads. The NHG also recognizes that there are ‘bottlenecks’ in the implementation of the guideline, because it takes a lot of time to help patients taper off.

“Unnecessary long-term use is undesirable due to possible dependence,” says a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport in response to the SFK figures on the use of benzos in the newspaper. The ministry is mainly looking for the cause in busy GPs. “The workload in general practitioner care is high.”

Online medicine world

RTL Nieuws previously wrote about the increase in the use of benzos and in particular about the ease with which the medicine is available online.

This way, a repeat prescription from the GP is not even necessary, but the drugs offered online are often versions of benzodiazepines. These are not licensed medications and have not been studied, which only increases the risks of taking the pills.