Archive for the ‘Nightmares’ Category
January 1st, 2012 | 
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Behavioral Sleep Clinics | April 2011 | Sleep Review
A New Home for Nightmare Treatment
Military personnel returning from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq show increasing rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and post-traumatic nightmares. Media coverage of these two vexing mental health conditions is also intensifying and raising public awareness about the need for more effective therapeutic options. With growing attention focused on patients with nightmares, sleep centers have an opportunity to engage these patients. Successfully doing so hinges on applying a standard of care for nightmare assessment and treatment through behavioral sleep medicine specialists.
In wildest dreams, a shot at reshaping nightmares | NWAonline
Her car is racing at a terrifying speed through the streets of a large city, and something gruesome, something with giant eyeballs, is chasing her, closing in fast. It was a dream, of course, and after Emily Gurule, a 50-year-old high school teacher, related it to Dr. Barry Krakow, he did not ask her to unpack its symbolism. He simply told her to think of a new one. “In your mind, with thinking and picturing, take a few minutes, close your eyes, and I want you to change the dream any way you wish,” said Krakow, founder of the PTSD Sleep Clinic at the Maimonides Sleep Arts and Sciences center in Albuquerque and a leading researcher of nightmares. And so …
Should We Manipulate Our Dreams? – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com
Nightmares have long terrified and mystified us, and historically they have been interpreted as omens, the work of demons, or sources of self-knowledge. In recent years, more therapists are using what is known as “scripting or dream mastery,” a technique that a doctor at the P.T.S.D. Sleep Clinic at the Maimonides Sleep Arts and Sciences center helped develop. Patients with severe sleeping problems can learn to control their dreams and replace unwelcome or terrifying images with ones that are pleasant or harmless.
Comments on: New York Times – Following a Script to Escape a Nightmare
Forty-eight comments were posted on the recent New York Times article on treatment of chronic nightmares. Reading them was illuminating and encouraging, because the overwhelming majority of writers showed a great deal of common sense in their appreciation for the use of imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT). Among this group, there were numerous stories of those who had received similar instructions from a parent or friend who advised them to “change” something about their nightmare scenarios. In other words, these people or their children had lived through a process of suffering from nightmares and then successfully eradicated them through an instruction that afforded them a measure of influence over the problem. Read the rest of this entry »
See Dr. Krakow's videos at sleeptreatment.com with the latest news and personal testimonials about his book.
