Mental health, negative experiences in chilhood, and its impact on dream experiences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33898/rdp.v31i117.435Keywords:
Nightmares, Childhood trauma, Mental Health, Disturbing DreamsAbstract
Disturbing dreams are vivid dreams characterized by intense negative emotions, which are among the most frequent symptoms of trauma victims, and their related disorders can persist for years and even decades after the trauma. The aim is to evaluate whether individuals who most dream recall, nightmares or bad dreams, score higher on traumatic experiences in their childhood and if they present current disturbing symptoms. Three measures were used over a sample of 446 adults from the general population: The Dream Questionnaire, Child Negative Experiences Questionnaire; and shortened version of the Symptoms Assessment (SA-45). Descriptive results showed specific dream content, such as hearing voices/music in dreams (88%), lucid dreams (79%), nocturnal terror (64%), evil entities (61%), and recurrent disturbing dreams (40%). The results also showed a correlation between the frequency of dream recall and higher scores of negative experiences in childhood, particularly parental abuse (emotional, sexual and physical) and a negative correlation between the dream recall and mental health. In addition, it confirmed the two main hypotheses: negative symptoms could "modulate" in some way the negative dream experiences. Gender differences also were found, i.e. male tended to have higher dream recall compared to female, and female tended to show predominantly more auditory dreams and nocturnal terrors compared to female.
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