It’s interesting how sleeping problems seem to be a hallmark of illness. Whether it’s OCD, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, Schizophrenia, at the very least insomnia is correlated with both of these illnesses.
The study, conducted by Nisse Sjöström, RN, and colleagues of Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Göteborg, Sweden, focused on 165 patients between the ages of 18-68, who were admitted to medical units or psychiatric wards at Sahlgrenska after a suicide attempt. It was discovered that 89 percent of subjects reported some kind of sleep disturbance. The most common complaint was difficulties initiating sleep (73 percent), followed by difficulties maintaining sleep (69 percent), nightmares (66 percent) and early morning awakening (58 percent). Nightmares were associated with a five-fold increase in risk for high suicidality.
It seems that nightmares may be clearly indicative to clinicians of certain danger.
This news, by the way, was delivered to my inbox via Google Alerts! Thanks, Adam!
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That sleeplessness is a common attribute of physical or mental illness isn’t too surprising. But the strong correlation of nightmares and suicide is very interesting (and disturbing)!
But does sleep disturbance accompany mental illness or is it part of the cause? Doesn’t sleep deprivation itself cause a variety of negative mental states and interfere with cognition?
And the same with nightmares: It seems likely that impaired brain function could produce nightmares as well as other disturbances that could lead to suicidal behavior, no?
Sleep is so important, it affects everything else we do.
Susan has the right idea – it’s not just that things that disrupt our functioning also mess up our sleep, but not getting enough good quality sleep can mess up our functioning. It’s all interconnected and not really possible to sort out a linear “this causes that” direction.
One of the things I find intriguing about EEG neurofeedback is that no matter what someone comes for, no matter what kind of changes they are hoping for — almost everyone gets the earliest changes in their sleep – their sleep patterns and quality get better regulated and likely a number of the changes that follow come our of those early sleep changes.
Fascinating stuff – Love the blog!