Self-reported sleep disturbances in patients with dissociative identity disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder and how they relate to cognitive failures and fantasy proneness

D. Heugten-van der Kloet*, R. Huntjens, T. Giesbrecht, H. Merckelbach

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Sleep disturbances, fantasy proneness, cognitive failures, and dissociative symptoms are related to each other. However, the co-occurrence of these phenomena has been primarily studied in non-clinical samples. We investigated the correlations between these phenomena in dissociative identity disorder (DID) patients, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients, and healthy controls. Both patient groups reported more sleep problems and lower sleep quality and displayed higher levels of fantasy proneness and cognitive failures than controls. However, the two patient groups did not differ with regard to these variables. Moreover, a higher level of unusual sleep experiences tended to predict participants belonging to the DID group, while specifically a lower sleep quality and more cognitive failures tended to predict participants belonging to the PTSD group.
Original languageEnglish
Article number19
JournalFrontiers in Psychiatry
Volume5
Early online date19 Feb 2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Feb 2014

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