209 Nightmare Content During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Influence of COVID-Related Stress and Sleep Disruption
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Introduction Nightmares are often associated with psychiatric disorders, though acute stress can also induce them. This study explores how the COVID-19 pandemic may have influenced the frequency and content of nightmares. Methods A sample of N=419 US adults completed online surveys about sleep and COVID-19 experiences. Participants were asked the degree to which they agree with statements including that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they have greater general stress, worse overall sleep, and more middle-of-the-night insomnia. They were also asked if they experienced nightmares during the pandemic on a range of topics, including confinement, claustrophobia, suffocation, oppression, drowning, failure, helplessness, natural disasters, anxiety, evil forces, war, domestic abuse, separation from loved ones, totalitarian regimes, being chased, dangerous animals, sickness, death, COVID-19, and apocalypse. Logistic regression analyses examined each nightmare content as outcome and increased stress, worse sleep, and more middle-of-the-night insomnia as predictors, adjusted for age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Results Those who reported greater general COVID-related stress were more likely to have nightmares about confinement (OR=1.66,p<0.03), failure (OR=1.64,p<0.005), helplessness (OR=2.89, 0<0.0005), anxiety (OR=2.37,p<0.0005), war (OR=3.42,p<0.0005), separation (OR=2.23,p<0.0005), totalitarianism (OR=3.78,p<0.003), sickness (OR=1.92,p<0.003), death (OR=1.66,p<0.01), COVID (OR=1.96,p<0.01), and apocalypse (OR=2.92,p<0.0005). Those who reported worsened sleep were more likely to have nightmares about confinement (OR=1.80,p<0.003), oppression (OR=2.99,p<0.0005), failure (OR=2.12,p<0.0005), helplessness (OR=1.67, 0<0.0005), disaster (OR=1.86,p<0.005), anxiety (OR=1.97,p<0.0005), evil forces (OR=1.56,p<0.02), war (OR=2.08,p<0.002), domestic abuse (OR=2.22,p<0.009), separation (OR=2.01,p<0.0005), totalitarianism (OR=3.39,p<0.0005), sickness (OR=1.74,p=0.003), death (OR=2.03,p<0.0005), COVID (OR=2.15,p<0.001), and apocalypse (OR=1.86,p<0.006). Those who reported worsened middle-of-the-night insomnia were more likely to have nightmares about confinement (OR=1.60,p<0.01), oppression (OR=1.97,p<0.002), failure (OR=2.00,p<0.0005), helplessness (OR=1.60,p<0.001), disaster (OR=1.52,p<0.04), anxiety (OR=2.27,p<0.0005), war (OR=2.10,p<0.001), domestic abuse (OR=1.74,p<0.04), separation (OR=1.86,p<0.0005), totalitarianism (OR=1.87,p<0.03), sickness (OR=1.80,p<0.001), death (OR=2.00,p<0.0005), COVID (OR=1.68,p<0.009), and apocalypse (OR=1.65,p<0.01). Conclusion The results suggest that increased stress may induce negatively-toned dreams related to that stress. Future studies will have to determine whether (and when) this symptom indicates an emotional regulation mechanism at play or the failure of such a mechanism. Support (if any):
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".