Quality of sleep among infected people: COVID-19 even infects your dreams

The impact of COVID-19 is measured even in the sleep of the population when infected people are more likely to have nightmares, according to an international survey carried out during the first wave of the pandemic.

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The study, recently published in the journal Nature and Science of Sleeplooked during the first months of the pandemic on the quality of sleep of 1088 adult participants, half of whom were infected with COVID-19.

Data was collected from 14 countries, including Canada, through an online questionnaire administered from May to July 2020.

Although both groups experienced an increase in the frequency of nightmares, this was “significantly” greater among respondents who had COVID-19.

The latter reported an increase of about 50% in the frequency with which they have nightmares, compared to just over 40% in the control group.

Severity of infection

Respondents who said they had a moderate or severe form of the disease tended to have more nightmares.

More generally, the frequency of dreams, good or bad, was also increased in both groups, which could be explained by people’s schedules, disrupted by telework, and the fact that they tended to wake later in the morning, a period conducive to dream activity.

“We know that nightmares are also associated with stress, anxiety and depression. So we also found this association in the subgroup that had caught COVID,” explains Charles Morin, professor at Laval University and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Sleep Disorders, who collaborated in the study.

First wave trauma

According to him, it is however important to place the study in the context of the first wave of the crisis, when the ignorance of an emerging virus and the first confinement caused anxiety.

It is also “not certain” that the results would be the same in 2022. “If we relate to 2020, there was still a lot more uncertainty in relation to the future. Today, we know a little more about what we are in, ”he underlines.

The study bears witness to the collective trauma generated by the start of the pandemic.

Mr. Morin even suggests that the incidence of nightmares that has been measured could possibly be higher than that documented by similar studies following the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco.

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