aleonard
02-05-2008, 11:47 AM
I found this short article very interesting and thought I would share. I worked as a nurse and was in on many trauma calls before moving onto social work and now writing, but I never had a problem with dreams until after 9/11. After 9/11 I stopped being able to remember my dreams and my sleep was disturbed. It was only a few years ago that my ability to remember dreams started to trickle back. My physician told me it was a mild form of PTSD and was my brains way of working through the images we saw of the attacks. Did anyone else have a similar experience or an experience as described in the article? It kinda proves a point that even if one is not at the scene of a terrible tragedy that we can be affected by veiwing those images on TV. ?:idontno:
9/11 Attacks Changed Way Americans Dream
Fri Feb 1, 11:47 PM ET
FRIDAY, Feb. 1 (HealthDay News) -- The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, not only caused huge political and social changes, they also altered the dreams of Americans.
That's the suggestion from a small study published in the February issue of Sleep.
Dr. Ernest Hartmann of Tufts University and Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Boston looked at 11 men and 33 women, aged 22-70, who'd been recording their dreams for at least two years. Each of the participants provided information about 20 consecutive dreams, 10 before 9/11 and 10 after 9/11.
The study found that dreams after 9/11 showed more intense images, but weren't longer, more dreamlike or more bizarre than those before terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In addition, the dreams after 9/11 did not contain more images of airplanes or buildings. None of the participants had dreams involving airplanes flying into buildings, even though they'd all seen such images many times on TV.
"The more intense imagery is very consistent with findings in people who have experienced trauma of various kinds," Hartmann said in a prepared statement. "The idea is that we all experienced at least some trauma on (9/11)."
More information
The U.S. National Sleep Foundation has more about dreams.
9/11 Attacks Changed Way Americans Dream
Fri Feb 1, 11:47 PM ET
FRIDAY, Feb. 1 (HealthDay News) -- The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, not only caused huge political and social changes, they also altered the dreams of Americans.
That's the suggestion from a small study published in the February issue of Sleep.
Dr. Ernest Hartmann of Tufts University and Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Boston looked at 11 men and 33 women, aged 22-70, who'd been recording their dreams for at least two years. Each of the participants provided information about 20 consecutive dreams, 10 before 9/11 and 10 after 9/11.
The study found that dreams after 9/11 showed more intense images, but weren't longer, more dreamlike or more bizarre than those before terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In addition, the dreams after 9/11 did not contain more images of airplanes or buildings. None of the participants had dreams involving airplanes flying into buildings, even though they'd all seen such images many times on TV.
"The more intense imagery is very consistent with findings in people who have experienced trauma of various kinds," Hartmann said in a prepared statement. "The idea is that we all experienced at least some trauma on (9/11)."
More information
The U.S. National Sleep Foundation has more about dreams.