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::  dreams and SSRI'S
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| dreams and SSRI'S |
Posted by raz even on 12/14/2007 08:44
I usually ask all my patients about any change in their dreams.
My clinical impression is that more then 50% of patients who take SSRI'S or SNRI's report more vivid dreams, bizarre dreams and more sexual and aggressive elements- especially during the initiation and withdrawal phase.
OF course there are many other drugs causing vivid dreams like bupropion (zyban) or nicotine patches, known to induce nightmares, and also melatonin.
But because serotonin enhancement is known to decrease REM sleep -
I think that Those observations are underestimated.
Dream intensity and vividness is surely different from REM length.
I have read Prof. mark solms fascinating book about the neuropsychology of dreams. Surely We can learn much from brain damaged patients, but I believe that we can learn also a lot from listening to our medicine treated patients . All we have to do - is ask them about any change in their dream patteren.
Does anybody have similar observations?
Thank you,
Dr. Raz Even
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| Re: dreams and SSRI'S |
Posted by johnc on 03/08/2008 08:03
I can certainly attest to changes in dream patterns. As a low-dose SSRI taker, my dream activity has essentially ceased - to my great chagrin.
The difficulty of interpreting the subjective nature of a patient's response may be something of an impediment but, in my own case, I feel I can retain sufficient objectivity to report observed changes in neurological behavior.
John Cant
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| Re: dreams and SSRI'S |
Posted by stefano_martellotti on 12/07/2008 11:39
I think that before we get able to achieve a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, we should examine the most simple possible explanations.
Every change in affective mental states has its reflections in dream life*. On the other side, the most evident SSRI's actions, from a psychological point of view, are naturally: mood elevation and the regulation of anxiety, rage, compulsion, etc. All of this actions are fundamentally affects regulations. Then, it's easy to guess that dream life could be stimulated (or "restored" - "restarted") by antidepressant and become richer, clear and more vivid because of its renewed representational power. This relationship may be explained by the general influnce of affective disregulation on human thought skills that usually consists in an impairment of elaborative thought. It's a common experience for all of us that emotions are sometimes able to overwheight our "thinking machine". The other side of the coin is that this "machine" can be restored by all those things able to heal emotional disregulations.
I have had many therapeutic sections with patients before and after my prescription of SSRI and therefore I'm learning to unearth and describe some differences between the two conditions. I often have seen a reactivation of mental abilities such as representational skills, immaginary thought, elaborative thinking and affective regulation. I think that all this skills taken together might be explained by a common underlying mental function (Bion's alfa function? Fonagy's mentalization?). I'm not saying that SSRI can "create" new mental abilities, but surely their effects on human affective life could start up again or stimulate the patient's mental functions that were impaired by emotional disorders before the intake of such drug.
The neurobiological side of this explanation may include, obviously, the neuromodulation of serotonine system but also other neurophisiological changes such as neurogenesis in the hippocampus.
The first step of a research aimed to describe and explain this relationships should, in my opinion, empirically demonstrate the change in dream's content after the introduction of antidepressants.
Sorry for my english, I wait for your comments
*and, of course, dreams influence in its turn affective life
Dr. Stefano Martellotti, IRPPI, Rome, Italy
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| Re: dreams and SSRI'S |
Posted by jemmy on 01/02/2010 05:49
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