Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2026

Genetic Factors Linked To Nightmares and Poor Mental Health Show Substantial Overlap

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Agenotyping study involving tens of thousands of individuals in Finland identified a significant overlap between genetic factors linked to nightmares and those associated with anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and neuroticism. The study also found that individuals with insomnia were more likely to experience frequent nightmares. The research was published in Translational Psychiatry.Nightmares are vivid and unsettling dreams that typically result in feelings of fear, distress, or anxiety upon awakening…..….Story continues…

By: Vladimir Hedrih

Source: psypost

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Critics:

Scientific research shows that nightmares may have many causes. In a study focusing on children, researchers were able to conclude that nightmares directly correlate with the stress in children’s lives. Children who experienced the death of a family member or a close friend or know someone with a chronic illness have more frequent nightmares than those who are only faced with stress from school or stress from social aspects of daily life.

A study researching the causes of nightmares focuses on patients who have sleep apnea. The study was conducted to determine whether or not nightmares may be caused by sleep apnea, or being unable to breathe. In the nineteenth century, authors believed that nightmares were caused by not having enough oxygen, therefore it was believed that those with sleep apnea had more frequent nightmares than those without it.

The results actually showed that healthy people have more nightmares than sleep apnea patients. Another study supports the hypothesis. In this study, 48 patients (aged 20–85 yrs) with obstructive airways disease (OAD), including 21 with and 27 without asthma, were compared with 149 sex- and age-matched controls without respiratory disease. OAD subjects with asthma reported approximately 3 times as many nightmares as controls or OAD subjects without asthma.

The evolutionary purpose of nightmares then could be a mechanism to awaken a person who is in danger. Lucid-dreaming advocate Stephen LaBerge has outlined a possible reason for how dreams are formulated and why nightmares occur. To LaBerge, a dream starts with an individual thought or scene, such as walking down a dimly lit street.

Since dreams are not predetermined, the brain responds to the situation by either thinking a good thought or a bad thought, and the dream framework follows from there. If bad thoughts in a dream are more prominent than good thoughts, the dream may proceed to be a nightmare. There is a view, possibly featured in the story A Christmas Carol, that eating cheese before sleep can cause nightmares, but there is little scientific evidence for this.

A single, biased study conducted by the British Cheese Board in 2005 argued that consuming cheese could trigger more vivid dreams, but this study was not backed up with sufficient research, and contradicts existing studies which found that consuming dairy products is associated with better overall sleep quality. Severe nightmares are also likely to occur when a person has a fever; these nightmares are often referred to as fever dreams.

Recent research has shown that frequent nightmares may precede the development of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung seemed to have shared a belief that people frequently distressed by nightmares could be re-experiencing some stressful event from the past. Both perspectives on dreams suggest that therapy can provide relief from the dilemma of the nightmarish experience.

Those with nightmares experience abnormal sleep architecture. The impact of having a nightmare during the night has been found to be very similar to that of insomnia. This is thought to be caused by frequent nocturnal awakenings and fear of falling asleep. When awoken from REM sleep by a nightmare, the dreamer can usually recall the nightmare in detail. They may also awaken in a heightened state of distress, with an elevated heart rate or increased perspiration.

 Nightmare disorder symptoms include repeated awakenings from the major sleep period or naps with detailed recall of extended and extremely frightening dreams, usually involving threats to survival, security, or self-esteem. The awakenings generally occur during the second half of the sleep period.

According to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders-Third Edition (ICSD-3), the nightmare disorder, together with REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) and recurrent isolated sleep paralysis, form the REM-related parasomnias subcategory of the Parasomnias cluster. Nightmares may be idiopathic without any signs of psychopathology or associated with disorders like stress, anxiety, substance abuse, psychiatric illness or PTSD (>80% of PTSD patients report nightmares).

As regarding the dream content of the dreams they are usually imprinting negative emotions like sadness, fear or rage.[4] According to the clinical studies the content can include being chased, injury or death of others, falling, natural disasters or accidents. Typical dreams or recurrent dreams may also have some of these topics.

Halliday (1987) grouped treatment techniques into four classes. Direct nightmare interventions that combine compatible techniques from one or more of these classes may enhance overall treatment effectiveness:

  • Analytic and cathartic techniques
  • Storyline alteration procedures
  • Face-and-conquer approaches
  • Desensitization and related behavioral techniques

Recurring post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) nightmares in which traumas are re-experienced respond well to a technique called imagery rehearsal. This involves dreamers coming up with alternative, mastery outcomes to the nightmares, mentally rehearsing those outcomes while awake and then reminding themselves at bedtime that they wish these alternative outcomes should the nightmares recur.

Research has found that this technique not only reduces the occurrence of nightmares and insomnia but also improves other daytime PTSD symptoms.The most common variations of imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT) “relate to the number of sessions, duration of treatment, and the degree to which exposure therapy is included in the protocol”.

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Thursday, September 24, 2026

Gen X Women Don’t Have The Bandwidth To Figure Out Why They Feel So Terrible

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At the end of last year, I started to see a cognitive behavioral therapist. My executive function, the set of mental processes that help order the day-to-day  like organization, working memory, time management and focus  was in shambles. In my intake interview, the therapist asked when I noticed that my focus had gotten worse, and I said that I’d been diagnosed with ADD when I was in my mid-40s, but added that I was also possibly in menopause.My ex-husband and co-parent had recently died, and I was now the single mother of a grieving teen.……Continue reading….

By: Andi Zeisler

Source: Salon

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Critics: 

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that combines basic principles from cognitive psychology and behaviorism.[1] It aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions by challenging and adjusting convictions and assumptions, while helping patients learn better-adapted behavior by trying and training new behaviours. While CBT has philosophical precursors in Stoicism, it developed in three waves in the 20th century.

Cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown as an effective treatment for clinical depression. Among psychotherapeutic approaches for major depressive disorder, cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy are recommended by clinical practice guidelines including The American Psychiatric Association Practice (APA) Guidelines (April 2000), and the APA endorsed Veteran Affairs clinical practice guideline.

CBT has been shown to be effective in the treatment of adults with anxiety disorders.[147] There is also evidence that using CBT to treat children and adolescents with anxiety disorders was probably more effective (in the short term) than wait list or no treatment and more effective than attention control treatment approaches. Some meta-analyses find CBT more effective than psychodynamic therapy and equal to other therapies in treating anxiety and depression.

A 2013 meta-analysis suggested that CBT, interpersonal therapy, and problem-solving therapy outperformed psychodynamic psychotherapy and behavioral activation in the treatment of depression. According to a 2004 review by INSERM of three methods, cognitive behavioral therapy was either proven or presumed to be an effective therapy on several mental disorders. This included depression, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress, and other anxiety disorders.

The first wave consisted of the development of behaviorism in the 1920s and behavioral therapy in the 1950s and 1960s. The second wave focused on the importance of cognitions in the therapeutic process, resulting in the development of cognitive therapy by psychoanalyst Aaron Beck in the 1950s and the establishment of classical CBT, when cognitive and behavioral approaches were combined.

The third wave took place in the 1980s and 1990s, when principles originating from Buddhism, especially mindfulness and acceptance, significantly contributed to the development of various new forms of CBT. Over time, cognitive behavior therapy became an umbrella term for all cognitive-based psychotherapies. CBT is a “problem-focused” and “action-oriented” form of therapy. The therapist’s role is to assist the client in finding and practicing effective cognitive and behavioral strategies to address identified obstacles and alleviate symptoms of the disorder.

CBT is based on the belief that thought distortions and maladaptive behaviors play a role in the development and maintenance of many psychological disorders. CBT focuses on challenging and changing these cognitive distortions (thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and their associated behaviors to improve emotional regulation and help the individual develop coping strategies to address problems. CBT includes a number of cognitive and behavioral psychotherapies that treat defined psychopathologies using evidence-based techniques and strategies.

These therapies include, but are not limited to, rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), cognitive therapy, metacognitive therapy, metacognitive training, reality therapy/choice theory, cognitive processing therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and multimodal therapy. New forms of CBT specifically influenced by mindfulness approaches include dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and compassion-focused therapy.

Though originally designed to treat depression, CBT is often prescribed as an evidence-informed treatment for many mental health and medical conditions. These include obsessive–compulsive disorder generalized anxiety disorder, substance use disorders, marital problems, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and eating disorders. Along with interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT), CBT is recommended in treatment guidelines as a psychosocial treatment of choice.

It is recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the British National Health Service. CBT is also recommended as the first line of treatment for the majority of psychological disorders in children and adolescents, including aggression and conduct disorder. Criticism of the therapy has focused on its lack of double-blind tested research, relatively high drop-out rates, and tendency to target symptoms rather than the underlying condition.

CBT may be delivered in conjunction with a variety of diverse but related techniques such as exposure therapy, stress inoculation, cognitive processing therapy, cognitive therapy, metacognitive therapy, metacognitive training, relaxation training, dialectical behavior therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy. Some practitioners promote a form of mindful cognitive therapy which includes a greater emphasis on self-awareness as part of the therapeutic process.

CBT is used to help people of all ages, but the therapy should be adjusted based on the age of the patient with whom the therapist is dealing. Older individuals in particular have certain characteristics that need to be acknowledged and the therapy altered to account for these differences thanks to age. Of the small number of studies examining CBT for the management of depression in older people, there is currently no strong support.

A typical CBT program would consist of face-to-face sessions between patient and therapist, made up of 6–18 sessions of around an hour each with a gap of 1–3 weeks between sessions. This initial program might be followed by some booster sessions, for instance after one month and three months. CBT has also been found to be effective if patient and therapist type in real time to each other over computer links.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is most closely allied with the scientist–practitioner model in which clinical practice and research are informed by a scientific perspective, clear operationalization of the problem, and an emphasis on measurement, including measuring changes in cognition and behavior and the attainment of goals.

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