Nightmare disorder

Clinic

• Also known as dream anxiety disorder characterized by frequent nightmares.
• Nightmares, which often portray the individual in a situation that jeopardizes their life or personal safety, usually occur during the REM sleep.
• Though most people have experienced at least one nightmare during their life, subjects with nightmare disorder experience them with a greater frequency.
• Nightmare disorders are included in the group of parasomnias

Nightmare disorder vs Sleep terror disorder

• Nightmare disorders can be confused with sleep terror disorders.
• After a sleep terror episode, the patient wakes up with more dramatic symptoms than with a nightmare disorder, such as screaming and crying.
• In sleep terror disorders, they don't remember the reason of the fear, while in nightmare disorder, they remembers it by details.
• Sleep terrors usually occur during NREM Sleep Nightmare disorder usually occur during the REM sleep.

Nightmare disorder vs Bad dreams

• Bad dreams have less emotional intense.
• Nightmares contain more scenes of aggression than bad dreams and more unhappy endings.
• Nightmares have more fear than with bad dreams.

Signs / Symptoms

• During the nightmare, the sleeper may scream and yell out things.
• He is often awakened by these threatening, frightening dreams and can often vividly remember their experience.
• Upon awakening, the sleeper is usually alert and oriented within their surroundings, but may have an increased heart rate and symptoms of anxiety, like sweating.
• They may have trouble falling back to sleep for fear they will experience another nightmare.
• Nightmares have deep effect on everyday tasks
• Recurring episodes of awakening while recalling the intensely disturbing dream manifestations which usually result from fear or anxiety, but can also be triggered by anger, sadness, disgust, and other dysphoric emotions.

Characteristics

• Fear is the most frequent emotion associated with nightmares, even if other emotions such as sadness, anger, and confusion can also be present.
• Presence of frequent nightmares that imply danger for the person and impact mood in a negative way is needed.
• When waking up from nightmares, the person behaves in an alert way.
• The disorder has to have a significant impact on the patient's personal, social or professional functioning, in areas like mood, sleep, cognition, behaviour, fatigue, family and occupation.

Comorbidity

• 50- 70% of the cases for PTSD,
• 17.5% for depression,
• 18.3% for insomnia,
• 16.7% for schizophrenia
• 49% for borderline personality disorder
• Sleep disorders such as night terrors, chronic insomnia and sleep-disordered breathing

Remedies

Caust

Stram

Top remedies in children	Calc	Children who dream of monsters and have strong fears of being observed.
	Aloe	Bad dreams of danger where the child is so terrified he is unable to cry. The child has dreams of soiling himself.
	Phos	Nightmares in children with restlessness over work they could not finish during the day. Sleepwalking
Falling sleep	Cann-i	Immediately after falling asleep Nightmares are accompanied by jerking of limbs, waking the person from sleep.
	Gels	Night terrors from the nose being blocked and dry.
	Nit-ac
	Kali-p	Bad dreams are accompanied by sighing and moaning sounds.
nightmares of death of near ones	Hydrog	Dreams of death of loved ones, esp children.
	Equisetum	Where a person has nightmares of crowds of people surrounding him,
	Ars	Dreams of death or dead people.
	Calc-f	Nightmares of death of relatives.
nightmares of misfortune	Calc	Dreams of misfortune, disasters and groundless fears of financial loss.
	Graph	In case of persistent thoughts where the person is haunted by unpleasant issues and dwells on disagreeable occurrences of the past at night,
	Lyc	In case of bad dreams about losing power
Being poisoned	Ars	Persistent fear of disease, germs, viruses, of being harmed by poisoning
	Kreos	Feeling pain in the limbs and sleeplessness which gets worse before midnight.
	Kali-n	Constant dreaming is interrupted by episodes of waking up. The person is chased by uneasy dreams of being poisoned or being in dangerous situations.
nightmares of sexual abuse	Cench	The best indicated Homeopathic medicines for nightmares of sexual abuse are Cenchris Contortix, Sepia and Staphisgaria. Homeopathic medicine Cenchris Contortix is prescribed for nightmares of sexual abuse and rape. It shows great recovery in persons having constant nightmares of committing rape as well. Nightmares of rape, of being pursued, chased by a knife and waking with screams at night from frightful dreams are treated well with Sepia. Staphysagria is one of the best Homeopathic medicines for nightmares where the persons wakes up extremely frightened, pushes things away, wants everyone to leave his room and often calls for his mother.
	Sep
	Staph