Sleepwalking, night terrors, and consciousness

Abstract

Objective: To determine some personality and psychoneurotic characteristics of adults who have the sleepwalking-night terrors syndrome.

Design: Prospective assessment of two groups of consecutive patients with a firm diagnosis of either of two specific sleep disorders as established clinically and by polysomnography.

Setting: Outpatient sleep disorders clinic and sleep laboratory in a tertiary referral centre.

Patients: 12 Patients referred consecutively to the clinic in whom a diagnosis of sleepwalking (six) or night terrors (six) was confirmed.

Main outcome measures: Psychological characteristics as measured at the time of clinical assessment by means of the Eysenck personality questionnaire, the hostility and direction of hostility questionnaire, and the Crown-Crisp experiential index.

Results: Both groups scored exceptionally highly on the hysteria scale of the Crown-Crisp experiential index and the night terrors group also scored highly on the anxiety scale. The patients with sleepwalking also scored highly on a measure of externally directed hostility.

Conclusions: The physiological and psychological features identified in these patients, possibly reflecting different expressions of a constitutional cerebral characteristic, may be explored in terms of hysterical dissociation. The findings contribute to the debate concerning the nature of sleepwalking, in particular with and without the forensic aspects.