Replicative dream quality was significantly associated with suicidal thoughts and active suicidal ideation.
Subjective distress from a previous night’s nightmare increases the likelihood of suicidal ideation among patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to results of a study published in Sleep Advances .
Distressing trauma-related dreams are understudied in PTSD, in part due to the inherent difficulties in quantifying dreams. However, existing studies have demonstrated that nightmares are associated with adverse mental health outcomes among individuals with PTSD.
To evaluate the relationship between distressing dream characteristics and suicidality among adults exposed to trauma, investigators from the University of California, San Francisco and National Center for PTSD in the United States recruited individuals (N=103) with a history of trauma and 1 or more weekly nightmare for the DDREAMS study. The participants kept morning and evening diaries for 21 days. In the mornings, participants described their dreams, reported mood upon awakening, and scored their dream on a 10-point subjective distress scale. In the evenings, participants reported intrusive thoughts about their dream or trauma, suicidal ideation, and their mood at bedtime.
Of the 103 participants, 69.9% were male, 64.1% were White, 59.2% were diagnosed with PTSD, and 87.4% were veterans. The participants had a mean age of 48.5 years (SD=14.7). On average, the participants had 4.1 weekly distressing dreams, a sleep quality of 51.2, sleep efficiency of 78.0%, and reported a distressing dream severity of 5.5 points.
[T]hese findings deepen our understanding of trauma dream phenomenology and highlight the contribution of different dream characteristics to different clinically significant symptoms such as mood, daytime intrusions and suicidal ideation.
When stratified by PTSD status, patients with PTSD reported more weekly distressing dreams ( P =.03), higher subjective distress scores ( P =.05), and were more likely to report that their dream was replicative of their traumatic event ( P =.004) than those without PTSD.
Subjective distress scores were positively associated with dream duration ( P <.001), post-dream arousal ( P <.001), level of detail recall ( P =.001), and replicative dream quality ( P =.001). Morning mood was negatively associated with subjective distress score ( P <.001) and post-dream arousal […]
Distressing Dreams Linked to Intrusive Thoughts, Suicidality in PTSD
