Although anxiety disorders are well investigated, little is known about the dream content of patients suffering from anxiety disorders. The aim of the present study was to investigate specific characteristics manifested in dreams of patients with clinical anxiety disorders and to compare them with dreams of healthy persons. The sample consisted of 38 participants with anxiety disorders and a matched healthy control group of 38 individuals. As soon as they woke up in the morning, each participant filled in written dream diaries for 21 days and thus provided written dream logs. Dream reports of the participants were analyzed according to the Hall and Van de Castle (1966) system of content analysis of dreams. The results of our study showed that the presence of an anxiety disorder resulted in significant differences in dream contents, compared to the dreams of healthy individuals. Dreams of anxiety patients contained more characters, higher numbers of different activities, social and aggressive interactions, lower numbers of friendly interactions, higher frequencies of failures, misfortunes and negative emotions, and a lower prevalence of successes, good fortune and positive emotions. In addition, they had higher numbers of locations and settings, had more negative evaluations and assessments, and were characterized by a more intense and wider range of different modifiers. The results thus indicate a clear difference in the content and structure of dreams in anxiety patients compared to healthy persons, although anxiety themes are not always prevalent in their dreams.

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Characteristics of dreams of clinical outpatients with anxiety disorders still remain a relatively poorly investigated field of psychology. The present study aimed at investigating several dream characteristics of outpatients with anxiety disorders in comparison with dream characteristics of healthy individuals. In the study, 38 adult participants with anxiety disorders and a matched healthy control group of 38 individuals were investigated. During a period of 21 days, all participants filled in written dream diaries directly after sleep, which contained two scales for positive and negative emotions and one scale for the general intensity of emotions in a dream, two dream questionnaires, the Multidimensional Düsseldorf Dream Inventory and the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire, and two nightmare questionnaires, the Nightmare Behavior Questionnaire and the Nightmare Distress Questionnaire. Results showed that patients with anxiety disorders tended to provide longer dream reports and possessed a higher dream recall frequency, their dreams were distinguished by a more negative emotional tone and a lower dream mood, more intense and vivid emotionality, more aversive dreams, a higher rate of incorporations of waking life into dreams, their waking-life mood was found to be more often influenced by dreams, they had a higher nightmare frequency and more nightmare distress and were more interested in the interpretation of their dreams. Within the group of anxiety patients, nightmare distress did not differ between men and women, as well as any behavioral consequences and effects after nightmares. The results indicate marked differences in the way anxiety patients experience dreams, irrespective of the dream contents.

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