There is a new study in Sweden that was just published showing a relationship between sleep disturbances, mainly nightmares, and suicide attempts.
Most (89 percent) patients reported having at least one type of sleep problem, with difficulty falling asleep as the most common problem (73 percent), the researchers report in the journal SLEEP. In addition, 69 percent said they had trouble staying asleep and nearly 60 percent said they experienced early morning awakening.
Two out of every three patients (66 percent) also reported experiencing nightmares, study findings indicate. "Frequent nightmares was the only sleep variable associated with high suicidality," the researchers report.
After factoring in other variables that may influence degree of suicidality, including other mental diagnoses, the investigators found that patients with frequent nightmares were almost four times as likely to be highly suicidal compared with patients who didn't report having nightmares.
Do you have lots of nightmares, dear readers? If so, you should mention it to your doctor.
Cited story.
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We probably have a common experience with this. As a co-sufferer of bipolar disorder I've gone through several medication withdrawls where I got 3-4 hours of sleep even when exhausted out of my mind. It was both difficult to fall and stay asleep. Needless to say, there is excessive "noise" upstairs when trying to lay down, with anxiety and racing thoughts going in every which direction. And the emotional instability and extreme irritability that you deal with the following day.
So yes, these results fail to surprise me, for personal reasons.
I know people who are depressed often have some form of insomnia. I know when I was in a depressed state I had problems falling asleep and early morning awakening. I did not have problems with nightmares.
I wonder how depression and insomnia interact. Is the depression directly causing insomnia, and if so how does it cause insomnia?
I was surprised to discover a few years back that most adults don't have nightmares, because I have wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat cinematic horrorfests quite regularly. The rudest thing is that because I'm woken out of REM sleep, I remember the bad dreams, but not any good ones I might have.
I'm not surprised by the depression link, but telling my doctor isn't going to happen, because at the moment, I don't get to have a doctor. I just love the American health-care system. . . ;)
I don't really struggle with depression so much or bipolarism, but I do struggle with significant anxiety problems. I very often (once a week or more) have "stress dreams" which aren't quite nightmares, but are definitely unpleasant.
Now my last ex, she had depression problems of some sort (I'm pretty sure something else was going on with her head, since she cycled through med after med saying they didn't work..but that's another story) and she would have awful nightmares. She'd scream, just a horrified fearful scream, in her sleep and I'd have to wake her up.
Interesting post/study. Never really thought about it.
It's worth noting that some antidepressants can make your dreams much more vivid and "bizarre"; the emotional content of such dreams with vary from person to person, and I would guess by medication as well.
Wasn't it an ancient Roman who complained that though he had wealth, power, family, it was all for nothing because "I have bad dreams"?
Hamlet: I could be bounded in a nut-shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
The rudest thing is that because I'm woken out of REM sleep, I remember the bad dreams, but not any good ones I might have.
Could you or someone else explain this a bit more? I only remember bad ones, which usually are "wake up jumping out of bed thrashing" bad, and assumed those were the only ones I had, at least lately, and obviously stress-related (depression being a recurring pain in the ass, too).