Association between recurrent dreams, disturbing dreams, and suicidal ideation in adolescents.

Disturbing dreams and recurrent dreams have both been linked to a wide range of difficulties in children. There is growing evidence that the experience of disturbing dreams is associated with suicidal ideation in adults but studies in adolescents have been limited and the results inconsistent. In addition, the possible between suicidal ideation and recurrent dreams has yet to be studied. We investigated the relation between disturbing dreams, recurrent dreams and suicidal in a sample of young adolescents. Self-report measures of disturbing dream, recurrent dream frequency, and suicidal ideation were collected at age 12 and again at age 13 years from 170 children from a prospective population-based cohort. While the rate of disturbing dreams and recurrent dreams dropped between 12 and 13, the rate of self-reported suicidal ideation increased between the ages of12 and 13 years. Analyses taking sex and age into account revealed that young who reported having had suicidal thoughts over the past year had greater frequencies of disturbing dreams and of recurrent dreams than who had not thought about suicide. These findings highlight the potential value of assessing disturbing and recurrent dreams as part of the screening for suicidal ideation in young adolescents.