Serious COVID-19 infections led to more nightmares, study finds
Global News
A sleep study found that, for some, the experience of a COVID-19 infection was as intense as a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
A new international study involving Canadian researchers has found that people who had COVID-19 during the pandemic’s first wave were more susceptible to nightmares — and the worse their infection, the more bad dreams they experienced.
The study found that, for some, the experience of a COVID-19 infection was as intense as a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
Sleep researchers in 14 countries including Canada compared the frequency of nightmares and other dreams in two groups of 544 subjects, a group of people who had COVID-19 and a control group of people who were not infected. The data was gathered between May and July 2020.
The researchers found that the frequency of dreams increased by about 15 per cent in the two groups during the first months of the pandemic.
Charles Morin, a psychology professor at Universite Laval who studies sleep and is one of the study’s authors, said that after the pandemic began, people tended to remember their dreams more.
“That might be because of the fact that remote work allowed many people to get up later, and it’s primarily in the morning that we dream, during what we call REM sleep,” he said in an interview. He added that if people remember their dreams more frequently, they’re also more likely to remember nightmares, “because everyone has nightmares at one time or another.”
The frequency of nightmares was similar for the two groups before the outbreak of the pandemic. However, the frequency of nightmares increased by 50 per cent in the group that had COVID-19 and by 35 per cent in the control group. The researchers also found that participants who had a moderate or serious form of the disease were more susceptible to nightmares than those whose infection was less serious.
The reason for the increase is not entirely clear. While the study did not rule out the possibility that it was due to effects of the virus on the brain, psychological factors associated with uncertainty and isolation, such as the loss of contact with family and friends, may also be involved.
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