Sleep Dynamic Therapy

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.

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Sound Sleep, Sound Mind with Dr. Barry Krakow

Dr. Barry Krakow is a board certified internist and sleep disorders specialist who has spent over 30 years in medicine in the fields of internal, emergency, addiction and sleep medicine. He has conducted more than two decades of research in the treatment of chronic nightmares and disturbing dreams at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine (1988-1999) and the Sleep & Human Health Institute (2000-current).

Dr. Krakow graduated magna cum laude from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He was residency trained and board certified in internal medicine and also has ten years of clinical work in emergency medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society and is the former medical director of University Hospital Sleep Disorders Center.

Dr. Krakow has published two books, Insomnia Cures and his most recent, Sound Sleep, Sound Mind, is the first book of its kind to focus on mental, emotional and physical causes to sleep disturbances. Dr. Krakow and his wife, Jessica Kohr-Krakow have also published Turning Nightmares into Dreams, an innovated self-help, audio series and workbook to eliminate bad dreams.

To listen to the interview, or to read more, click here…

More than 150 years ago, Elias Howe invented a refined lock stitch sewing machine that would revolutionize manufacturing, but he hit a snag.

“He was stuck on the needle,” says Deirdre Barrett, psychology professor at Harvard Medical School. He couldn’t get it through fabric and bring thread back again.

Then he had a frightening dream of island savages threatening to spear him if he didn’t finish the design. He awoke excited, because their spear tips had holes — like needles with eyes in the point — and the solution to his problem. Read the rest of this entry »

A retrospective study of 1,078 adults with PTSD treated at a sleep center documented round-the-clock sleep/wake disturbances. The higher their PTSD symptom scores, the more apt they were to report bedtime worries about losing sleep, racing thoughts, watching the clock, and restless legs syndrome.

The same people reported trouble falling asleep, night waking, nightmares, periodic limb movements, and poor sleep. In the daytime, they had more trouble with memory and concentration, felt sleepier and more fatigued, and reported lower quality of life than those with lower PTSD scores. The severity of their symptoms was correlated with sleep factors that promote excess arousal, Barry Krakow, M.D., and colleagues at Maimonides Sleep Arts and Sciences in Albuquerque, N.M., reported at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in June. Changes in the brain during sleep in people with PTSD may maintain or increase activity in arousal-promoting brain centers and reduce activity in sleep-promoting centers, Anne Germain, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told Psychiatric News.

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