Am J Psychiatry 1987; 144:344-347
Copyright © 1987 by American Psychiatric Association
Long-term effects of extreme situational stress on sleep and dreaming
A Hefez, L Metz and P Lavie
Sleep data were obtained on 11 patients who had survived traumatic events
and who complained of sleep disturbances. Each was awakened from REM and
non-REM sleep for dream recall. The patients had lower sleep efficiency
indices (because of prolonged sleep latency and larger amounts of "awake"
plus "movement" time within sleep periods), shorter REM time, and longer
REM latencies than did control subjects. Four of the 11 patients had REM-
and non-REM-related nightmares, which, in two sea disaster patients, were
associated with REM-related motor activity. The rest of the patients had
unusually low dream recall in spite of high eye movement density.
