Pandemic nightmares: Effects on dream activity of the COVID‐19 lockdown in Italy

Abstract

COVID-19 has critically impacted the world. Recent works have found substantial changes in sleep and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dreams could give us crucial information about people's well-being, so here we have directly investigated the consequences of lockdown on the oneiric activity in a large Italian sample: 5,988 adults completed a web-survey during lockdown. We investigated sociodemographic and COVID-19-related information, sleep quality (by the Medical Outcomes Study-Sleep Scale), mental health (by the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales), dream and nightmare frequency, and related emotional aspects (by the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire). Comparisons between our sample and a population-based sample revealed that Italians are having more frequent nightmares and dreams during the pandemic. A multiple logistic regression model showed the predictors of high dream recall (young age, female gender, not having children, sleep duration) and high nightmare frequency (young age, female gender, modification of napping, sleep duration, intrasleep wakefulness, sleep problem index, anxiety, depression). Moreover, we found higher emotional features of dream activity in workers who have stopped working, in people who have relatives/friends infected by or who have died from COVID-19 and in subjects who have changed their sleep habits. Our findings point to the fact that the predictors of high dream recall and nightmares are consistent with the continuity between sleep mentation and daily experiences. According to the arousal-retrieval model, we found that poor sleep predicts a high nightmare frequency. We suggest monitoring dream changes during the epidemic, and also considering the implications for clinical treatment and prevention of mental and sleep disorders.

Dream Activity in Narcoleptic Patients During the COVID-19 Lockdown in Italy

“…Further, a gender difference was observed since females revealed a larger dream recall rate according to the previous literature (e.g., Barrett, 2020;Iorio et al, 2020;Scarpelli et al, 2021a). In addition, aging was associated with a drop in dream recall frequency also during lockdown (Scarpelli et al, 2021a).…”

“…Awakenings during sleep would guarantee the elaboration of dream material and its transfer from short-term memory storage to long-term storage (Koulack and Goodenough, 1976;Scarpelli et al, 2021b). Interestingly, NT1 patients, as well as control subjects (see Scarpelli et al, 2021a) reported an association between frightening dreams and higher sleep duration. This finding is only apparently in conflict with the activation/arousal-retrieval model.…”

“…We have to underline that recent studies highlighted that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people reported sleep alterations and, in parallel, high dream recall and nightmare frequency (e.g., Iorio et al, 2020 ; MacKay and DeCicco, 2020 ; Gorgoni et al, 2021 ; Scarpelli et al, 2021a ). During the pandemic, people's dreams showed a greater negative emotional charge (e.g., Iorio et al, 2020 ; Schredl and Bulkeley, 2020 ; Gorgoni et al, 2021 ; Scarpelli et al, 2021a ) and pandemic-related contents (e.g., Iorio et al, 2020 ; Schredl and Bulkeley, 2020 ).…”

“…We have to underline that recent studies highlighted that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people reported sleep alterations and, in parallel, high dream recall and nightmare frequency (e.g., Iorio et al, 2020;MacKay and DeCicco, 2020;Gorgoni et al, 2021;Scarpelli et al, 2021a). During the pandemic, people's dreams showed a greater negative emotional charge (e.g., Iorio et al, 2020;Schredl and Bulkeley, 2020;Gorgoni et al, 2021;Scarpelli et al, 2021a) and pandemic-related contents (e.g., Iorio et al, 2020;Schredl and Bulkeley, 2020). Moreover, fragmented and lighter sleep has proven to be linked to dreaming during lockdown in healthy subjects (Scarpelli et al, 2021a), consistently to the "arousal-retrieval hypothesis" pointed out that dream recall may be promoted by awakenings during sleep (Koulack and Goodenough, 1976).…”

Dreaming in Adolescents During the COVID-19 Health Crisis: Survey Among a Sample of European School Students

“…Moreover, a shift toward more negative dreams was found, which was directly related to the subjective stress in waking life, for example, social distancing affected mental health (Barrett, 2020;Iorio et al, 2020;Mota et al, 2020;Schredl and Bulkeley, 2020). In a similar way, the frequency of nightmares increased during the pandemic in both clinical (Gupta, 2020;Sierro et al, 2020) and normative samples of adults (Musse et al, 2020;Pérez-Carbonell et al, 2020;Scarpelli et al, 2021).…”