Dreaming away depression: The role of REM sleep and dreaming in affective disorders

REM sleep and dreaming may play a crucial role in the processing of affect. In a recent study, we demonstrated that dream content is related to prevailing mood stare and that certain types of dream precede upward mood changes in bipolar disorder (manic-depression). To replicate and extend initial findings, we monitored sleep, dream content and mood, in both bipolar and unipolar patients hospitalized for depression. All patients (n = 24) were recruited in a depressed state. During this trial, subjects reported their dreams and rated their mood each morning. They also had their sleep recorded intermittently using the Nightcap, a compact computerized home sleep monitoring device. We found that: (i) REM latency tends to increase as the mood improves in bipolars but is stable (and even decreases with mood improvements) in unipolar depressives; (ii) dream content continues to systematically relate to prevailing mood state, but the patterns seen are different in unipolars and bipolars, (iii) dreams of death are frequent in bipolar disorder and mark the transition of a mood shift upward.