Characteristics of Dreams and Nightmares in Patients with Anxiety Disorders

Abstract

Characteristics of dreams of clinical outpatients with anxiety disorders still remain a relatively poorly investigated field of psychology. The present study aimed at investigating several dream characteristics of outpatients with anxiety disorders in comparison to dream characteristics of healthy individuals. In the study, 38 adult participants with anxiety disorders and a matched healthy control group of 38 individuals were investigated. During a period of 21 days all participants filled in written dream diaries directly after sleep, which contained two scales for positive and negative emotions and one scale for the general intensity of emotions in a dream, two dream questionnaires, The Multidimensional Düsseldorf Dream Inventory (MDTI) and the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire (MADRE), and two nightmare questionnaires, the Nightmare Behavior Questionnaire (NBQ) and the Nightmare Distress Questionnaire (NDQ). Results showed that patients with anxiety disorders tended to provide longer dream reports and possessed a higher dream recall frequency, their dreams were distinguished by a more negative emotional tone and a lower dream mood, more intense and vivid emotionality, more aversive dreams, a higher rate of incorporations of waking life into dreams, their waking-life mood was found to be more often influenced by dreams, they had a higher nightmare frequency and more nightmare distress and were more interested in the interpretation of their dreams. Within the group of anxiety patients nightmare distress did not differ between men and women, as well as any behavioral consequences and effects after nightmares. The results indicate marked differences in the way anxiety patients experience dreams, irrespective of the dream contents.

Keywords: anxiety disorders, dreams, dream characteristics, nightmares, gender differences