Dreaming during a pandemic: Low incorporation of COVID-19-specific themes and lucidity in dreams of psychiatric patients and healthy controls.
International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP January 1, 2023 Judith Koppehele-Gossel, Lena-Marie Weinmann, Ansgar Klimke et al. 5 citations
During the COVID-19 pandemic, pandemic-related themes were incorporated into dreams, but such incorporation was rare. Psychiatric outpatients and healthy controls did not differ in how often their dreams included pandemic content, and incorporation was unrelated to psychiatric symptoms or loneliness. Loneliness was, however, linked to threat-related dream content, suggesting it is a risk factor for bad dreams but not for crisis-specific incorporation. Lucid dreaming core dimensions—insight, control, and dissociation—were similar between outpatients and controls during lockdowns. Compared to a pre-pandemic sample, scores for control and dissociation were lower, while insight was not. The authors propose that REM sleep intensified during lockdowns for emotional consolidation, making the mental state less hybrid and thus less lucid.