Abstract
According to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming and contemporary psychodynamic approaches, dreams reflect waking life. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and dreaming in adolescents. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Italy, Romania and Croatia involving 2,105 secondary school students (69% girls, mean age 15.6 ± 2.1 years; 31% boys, mean age 15.1 ± 2.2 years; mean age of whole sample 15.4 ± 2.1 years). No substantial differences between countries were found. Thirty-one percent of the participants reported heightened dream recall, 18% noticed an increase in nightmares during the lockdown, and 15% of the provided dreams (n = 498) included pandemic-related content. The results indicate that subjective emotional reactions to lockdown had a significantly higher correlation to dreaming than objective distress (i.e., illness or death of a close one because of COVID-19). These findings suggest that attention to dreams should be included in preventive programs for adolescents with pandemic-related stress.
Highlights
Dreams reflect waking life, according to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming (Schredl, 2003) and psychodynamic approaches (Fagioli, 1972; Iannaco et al, 2015), and there is evidence that emotionally significant waking life experiences are integrated in dreams (Strauch and Meier, 1996; Domhoff, 2018; Schredl, 2018)
Nightmare increase Reporting an extraordinary dream Loved one with COVID-19 Loved one died of COVID-19 Fear of getting COVID-19 Fear of loved ones getting COVID-19 Worries about another lockdown Suffering from restrictions Difficulties in coping with lockdown Proud about own behavior Experiencing discomfort/sadness Experiencing anger/restlessness Experiencing emptiness/persistent boredom (n = 2,099) Missing social contacts Creative time
The findings indicate that there is a consistent correlation between the students’ emotional stress related to the pandemic and dreaming
Summary
Dreams reflect waking life, according to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming (Schredl, 2003) and psychodynamic approaches (Fagioli, 1972; Iannaco et al, 2015), and there is evidence that emotionally significant waking life experiences are integrated in dreams (Strauch and Meier, 1996; Domhoff, 2018; Schredl, 2018) Given these theoretical frameworks and findings, it is likely to expect that the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak, along with the pandemic-related restrictions, might have affected dreaming. Recent studies showed that dreaming in adults has undergone significant changes during the COVID-19 pandemic (Barrett, 2020; Mota et al, 2020; Gorgoni et al, 2021; Wang et al, 2021). The frequency of nightmares increased during the pandemic in both clinical (Gupta, 2020; Sierro et al, 2020) and normative samples of adults (Musse et al, 2020; Pérez-Carbonell et al, 2020; Scarpelli et al, 2021)
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