Interest in telephone nightmare counselling in patients with sleep-related breathing disorders

Abstract

Background and objective Nightmares are typically underdiagnosed and undertreated, even though frequent nightmares are quite common in patients with sleep-related breathing disorders. Based on a previous study, we investigated whether patients would respond if they were specifically asked whether they would be interested in telephone counselling about nightmares and nightmare treatment. Materials and methods The present study included 537 patients with sleep-related breathing disorders who completed a nightmare questionnaire and—if interested—provided their contact data for a telephone counselling session. Results Of the total patients, 5.40% were interested in the telephone counselling. Most of these patients had never sought help for their nightmare condition before. This percentage is much lower than in a previous study, possibly due to the higher time expenditure related to the new consent procedure. Conclusion The findings indicate that patients with nightmare problems can be reached with this approach even though they have never sought professional help before. In order to minimize the threshold, it would be desirable to have clinical in-house nightmare counselling, which would not require a detailed study information brochure and informed consent.

Seeking help for nightmares: Associated personality factors

“…The most obvious factor affecting considering seeking professional help for nightmares is nightmare frequency and—if measured explicitly with a global rating scale—nightmare distress, this was found in the present sample and reported in the literature (Belicki, 1992; Schredl et al, 2016; Schredl et al, 2020). The strong association (large effect size) between nightmare frequency and the “having a problem with nightmares” item in the present sample corroborates this argument.…”

“…Thus, it seems important to find new ways to provide adequate and easily accessible treatment options for those persons (Nadorff et al, 2015). Schredl et al (2016) and Schredl et al (2020) offered patients undergoing diagnostic procedures in a sleep laboratory (most often sleep‐related breathing disorders) a telephone counselling session for nightmares, and a substantial number of persons who were affected by nightmares (in addition to their primary sleep disorder, the reason they were administered to the sleep diagnostics) were interested, including many who had never sought professional help before. These findings indicate that actively approaching possible nightmare sufferers can decrease the gap between having the diagnosis and getting treatment.…”

“…Overall, the present study clearly indicates that personality factors are related to considering seeking professional help for nightmares—in addition to nightmare frequency. In order to close the gap between the percentage of persons suffering from nightmares and the percentage of patients undergoing (hopefully a successful) treatment, new ways have to be developed for reaching out to these patients (Schredl et al, 2020). In addition, it is important to increase the knowledge about nightmares in healthcare professionals, as many did not know much about nightmares (Thünker et al, 2014; Youngren et al, 2019) and the first‐line treatments like Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (Morgenthaler et al, 2018).…”

“…Within her Nightmare Distress Questionnaire (NDQ), Belicki (1992) included the following item “In the past year have you considered seeking professional help for your nightmares?”, and about 23% gave an affirmative answer—a percentage similar to the above reported figures of actually having sought help. Nightmare frequency and nightmare distress were correlated with the interest in seeking professional help (Belicki, 1992; Schredl et al, 2016; Schredl et al, 2020), but no effects of gender, age and education on this variable were reported (Schredl, 2013b; Schredl et al, 2016; Schredl et al, 2020; Schredl & Göritz, 2014). So far, research had not taken a closer look at trait factors such as personality dimensions, whether they might affect the willingness to seek professional help for frequent and distressing nightmares.…”

Conquering nightmares on the phone: one-session counseling using imagery rehearsal therapy

“…Two participants of the sleep lab group felt uncomfortable talking about private topics on the phone and therefore decided to cease participation [10][11][12][13]. However, previous studies indicated that when directly offered help, 15.5 up to 46.8% of people with frequent nightmares (once a week or more often) expressed their interest in telephone counseling covering information on the etiology and treatment of nightmares [13,14]. Therefore, low-threshold interventions are urgently needed.…”