A recent study reveals the importance of dreams on mental health. But be careful… It may disrupt your sleep schedule.
Whether we remember it or not, we spend two hours a night dreaming, or 25% of our overall sleep time. Despite everything, the realm of dreams still remains uncertain for scientists. There is still no consensus on their meaning or meaning. By definition, the dream is considered as a series of images, of representations of the mind having as characteristic an illusory self-consciousness.
In an interview given to Ouest-France, Benjamin Putois, a clinical psychologist, nevertheless underlines their benefits on our psychological well-being: “We can affirm it, dreams have a function: they help us to digest our emotions. Nothing to see with the expression of drives or fantasies linked to sexuality described by Freud and defended by a number of psychoanalysts.”
Jean-Michel Gaillard, a renowned sleep specialist, described nightmares as “an anxious dream, particularly rich and agitated.” Often linked to our experiences, they can proliferate in cases of stress, anxiety or even post-traumatic stress (PTSD). Concretely, nightmares are the result of concerns, worries and unregulated emotions. Numerous studies have also studied the impact of Covid-19 on sleep. The frequency of nightmares was found to increase in participants who had contracted an illness.
A report published in the journal The Lancet goes further. She highlighted the influence of bad dreams on the psychological state of an individual. The study notably assessed the cognitive decline of 600 individuals aged between 35 and 64 and 2,600 people aged 79 and over. The results reveal that the risk of dementia is higher in people who have regular nightmares.
Dementia refers to a set of symptoms that affect brain function, and is currently the seventh leading cause of death worldwide. Every year there are almost 10 million new cases. But don’t panic: nightmares do not necessarily lead to the development of neurodegenerative diseases. In fact, for a healthy adult, it is common to do it once a month.