Nightmare experience and personality disorder functioning styles in healthy volunteers and nightmare disorder patients
Xu Shao, Chu Wang, Chanchan Shen, Yanli Jia, Wei Wang
Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic September 1, 2020 DOI: 10.1521/bumc.2020.84.3.278 (opens in new tab) via OpenAlex
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractPeople with nightmare disorder experience more frequent and intense nightmares than healthy individuals, and they also show higher levels of certain personality disorder traits, including paranoid, schizotypal, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic, avoidant, and dependent styles. In healthy volunteers, borderline, schizotypal, and passive-aggressive traits predicted aspects of nightmare experience, while in patients, dependent, avoidant, histrionic, and paranoid traits were significant predictors. These findings suggest that personality features are closely linked to nightmare experiences, particularly in those with nightmare disorder, and that therapy addressing personality adjustment may be beneficial.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Cross-sectional study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 337 |
| Population | 219 healthy volunteers and 118 nightmare disorder patients |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Borderline personality disorder Avoidant personality disorder Clinical psychology Sadistic personality disorder |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key finding | Nightmare disorder patients scored significantly higher than healthy volunteers on nightmare frequency, nightmare experience scales, and several personality disorder styles, with different personality traits predicting nightmare experience in each group. |
Abstract
Nightmares are prevalent in psychiatric disorders, and personality disorder features might be associated with nightmare experience, especially in nightmare disorder patients. The authors invited 219 healthy volunteers and 118 nightmare disorder patients to undergo tests of the Nightmare Experience Questionnaire (NEQ), the Parker Personality Measure (PERM), and the Plutchik-van Praag Depression Inventory. Compared to healthy volunteers, nightmare disorder patients scored significantly higher on annual nightmare frequency and NEQ Physical Effect, Negative Emotion, Meaning Interpretation, and Horrible Stimulation, and higher on PERM Paranoid, Schizotypal, Borderline, Histrionic, Narcissistic, Avoidant, and Dependent styles. Borderline, Schizotypal, and Passive-Aggressive styles in healthy volunteers and Dependent, Avoidant, Histrionic, and Paranoid in patients were significant predictors of some NEQ scales. Higher annual nightmare frequency, higher scale scores of nightmare experience and personality disorder styles, and more associations between the two were found in nightmare disorder patients, implying the need for personality-adjustment therapy for nightmare disorder.