Dreams that may indicate mental disorder

• What dreams do people with schizophrenia see?
• What dreams do people with post-traumatic stress disorder have?
• What dreams do people with obsessive-compulsive disorder see?
• Which dreams do people with bipolar disorder have?
• What dreams do people with mental anesthesia see?
• What kind of dreams do people having depression see?

Do you believe in the importance of our dreams? Do you believe that dreams can carry more than just a collection of unrelated images? It's time to learn more about this aspect - here are the types of dreams that may indicate a person has a mental disorder.

Dreams that occur with schizophrenia

What dreams do people with schizophrenia see? Schizophrenia is a dangerous mental illness that causes serious and irreversible changes in the human brain. Patients with schizophrenia (by the way, there are several ways to determine the interlocutor's mental disorder) often hear voices, see what others do not see, suffer from obsessive thoughts and do not adapt well in society.

You, for sure, have repeatedly heard that one of the signs of schizophrenia is colored dreams, but this is not entirely true. It’s just that schizophrenics see “pictures in a dream” brighter, colors become richer, and emotions become stronger. Moreover, the longer a person is sick, the more noticeable these changes will be.

Here are some examples of dreams that patients with schizophrenia may have:
• the same recurring story that one seen in dreams throughout the night;
• dreams in which you can clearly see what colors all objects and details are painted in;
• dreams with violence or violent content;
• experiencing long-forgotten feelings or emotions in a dream;
• people or objects moving backwards, such as cars driving in the opposite direction;
• non-existent worlds, heaven or hell;
• living all the emotions or events that occur in a dream.

Scientists have also repeatedly proven that after waking up, patients with schizophrenia do not immediately understand whether it was a dream or not, and for some time they continue to exist “inside it”.

Dreams with post-traumatic stress disorder

What dreams do people with PTSD see? Post-traumatic stress disorder occurs as a result of traumatic situations, such as combat (war), physical violence, or serious injury. PTSD is characterized by symptoms such as short-term memory loss, increased anxiety, excitement, obsessive thoughts, hypervigilance, psychopathological re-experiencing (involuntary memories).

People with PTSD, as a rule, often have nightmares associated with the very traumatic situation.

However, in addition to them, they can also see dreams with other content:
• identical and meaningless images;
• dreams that end in the same place;
• dreams in only one color;
• reincarnation in animals or any objects;
• feeling like a person of the opposite sex - a woman or a man;
• escape from someone, identifying oneself with a criminal.

Dreams in obsessive-compulsive disorder

What do people with OCD see in their dreams? Obsessive-compulsive disorder is usually expressed in patients with an obsessive uncontrollable desire to wash their hands 10 times, check all appliances, locks and windows before going out, and perform other tiresome rituals (compulsions) that help get rid of disturbing thoughts (obsessions).

This obsessive state does not leave OCD patients even in their sleep, so they quite often dream of:
• emotional dreams in which they have to contend with tormenting feelings of shame or anger;
• struggle with any contrasting desires, with a certain fear. Waking up, a person may feel guilty or very disappointed for not doing what was required of him;
• dreams in which a person controls everything that happens or has some kind of magical power.

Dreams in bipolar disorder

What kind of dreams do people with bipolar disorder see? Bipolar disorder is common not only among celebrities (many stars suffer from this disease), but also among ordinary people. It manifests itself in alternating affective states - manic and depressive, sometimes mixed - which entail a huge number of unpleasant symptoms.

The dreams of people with bipolar disorder are just as vivid and intense as those of those with schizophrenia. However, they, unlike schizophrenics, perfectly remember their dreams and tell others about them in detail.

And their dreams are as follows:
• dreams-series with a certain plot can last for several months or even years;
• colorful dreams, where a person experiences a feeling of indescribable happiness. For example, he/she can appear in a dream as some kind of deity, and all other people worship him/her;

Scientists explain this phenomenon by the fact that at such moments the depressive stage turns into a manic one.

Dreams during mental anesthesia

What do people who have mental anesthesia dream about? Mental anesthesia is considered as a symptom of a dissociative disorder and is manifested by a complete or partial lack of sensory sensitivity. In other words, in this state, people lose the ability to experience positive or negative emotions. And this happens not only during wakefulness, but even in a dream.

Dreams in patients with mental anesthesia may be:
• dreams in which they die several times;
• loss of your own body or emotions, feeling that some “part” has been taken away from you;
• a clear awareness that everything that happens in a dream is the fruit of a violent fantasy;
• the complete absence of any emotions in a dream, or, on the contrary, the experience of vivid emotions that a person has not experienced in real life for a long time;
• dreams in which close people and well-known places are perceived as something alien, completely new;
• dreams in which the patient allegedly sees the world through the eyes of others and is clearly aware of this.

Dreams in people with depression

Which dreams do people with depression see? Depression is perhaps the most common mental disorder, the presence of which is suspected by less than half of patients. Not surprising, because people suffering from depression can drink, walk and have fun, and then at one moment decide that “everything is bad” and it makes no sense to live on.

Only a specialist can diagnose depression, because its signs are often confused with ordinary boredom, sadness, low self-esteem and fatigue.

However, if you often see at least some of the dreams listed below, you are much closer to depression than you think:
• gloomy places, abandoned houses, cemeteries, perhaps their own funerals;
• dead people being alive;
• very realistic nightmares, after which a person cannot understand for some time whether this happened in reality or in a dream;
• several dreams interconnected by a certain "storyline";
• dreams in which you seem to be watching yourself from the side.

In addition, people with depression often have a "dream within a dream." Let's decipher: you may dream that you are very tired and want to sleep, and when you "fall asleep", you see some kind of dream that you perceive as reality.