Faculty Articles
Dreams In The Acute Aftermath Of Trauma And Their Relationship To PTSD
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Journal of Traumatic Stress
ISSN
0894-9867
Publication Date
1-2001
Abstract
Dreams following trauma have been suggested to aid emotional adaptation, yet trauma-related nightmares are a diagnostic symptom of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There is little published data relating dreams to PTSD soon after trauma. We assessed dreams and PTSD in 60 injured patients after life-threatening events and obtained follow-up assessments in 39 of these participants 6 weeks later. Ten of 21 dream reports from morning diaries were rated and described as similar to the recent traumatic event. The participants reporting these distressing “trauma dreams” had more severe concurrent PTSD symptoms than those reporting other categories of dreams and had more severe initial and follow-up PTSD than those without dream recall. These findings along with our preliminary longitudinal observations relating changes in dream patterns to outcome, suggest a relationship of dream characteristics and early adaptive versus maladaptive patterns of processing traumatic memory.
DOI
10.1023/A:1007812321136
Volume
14
Issue
1
First Page
241
Last Page
247
NSUWorks Citation
Mellman, T. A.,
David, D.,
Bustamante, V.,
Torres, J.,
Fins, A. I.
(2001). Dreams In The Acute Aftermath Of Trauma And Their Relationship To PTSD. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 14(1), 241-247.
Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cps_facarticles/494
