People with schizophrenia spectrum disorders report fewer and shorter dreams than healthy controls, with fewer characters, settings, and emotions. The reduction in emotional content in dreams correlates with greater symptom severity, suggesting that dreaming plays a role in emotion regulation during wakefulness—a function that may be impaired in psychosis.
People with schizophrenia spectrum disorders report fewer and shorter dreams than healthy controls, and their dreams contain less content—fewer characters, settings, and interactions—along with more spatiotemporal bizarreness. The number of emotions, especially negative ones, is lower in patients' dream reports and correlates inversely with symptom severity. Verbal fluency correlates positively with dream report length and negatively with perceptive bizarreness. These findings suggest that the emotion regulation function of dreaming may be impaired in psychosis and linked to symptom severity.
During Italy's total lockdown in April 2020, about 30% of 1,622 participants reported increased dream frequency, length, and vividness, while roughly 20% reported decreases. Dream affect became significantly more negative compared to the month before lockdown. During the partial lockdown in November 2020, 214 of the same participants showed similar patterns, with negative dream affect again increasing significantly. In both lockdowns, worsened sleep quality predicted increased negative dream emotionality, which in turn predicted changes in dream frequency, length, and vividness. Between lockdowns, negative dream affect returned almost to baseline, suggesting dream emotionality is closely tied to lifestyle and waking emotional changes.