Unusual sleep experiences and dissociation as mediators between sleep quality and proneness to hallucinations in a nonclinical population sample: a preliminary study

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of sleep quality to proneness to hallucinations and the mediating role of dissociation and unusual sleep experiences in a nonclinical sample.

Methods: One hundred and seventy-seven participants completed a questionnaire on sleep quality, a dissociative experiences scale, an unusual sleep experiences scale and a hallucination proneness scale.

Results: The results showed a significant positive association between quality of sleep and hallucination proneness, dissociation and unusual sleep experiences, and that dissociation and unusual sleep experiences fully mediated between sleep quality and hallucination proneness.

Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of variables related to sleep quality and unusual sleep experiences and dissociation in understanding hallucinations, and the importance of taking these variables into consideration in designing intervention directed at reducing distress caused by hallucinations.

KEYWORDS:

• Dissociation
• unusual sleep experiences
• sleep quality
• hallucination proneness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Salvador Perona-Garcelán http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7771-7857

Notes

1. Dissociation refers to a “lack of normal integration of thoughts, feelings and experiences into the stream of consciousness and memory” (Bernstein & Putnam, 1986, p. 727), and is typified by feelings of depersonalization, derealization and absorption.

2. In this study, a varied battery of scales was used to measure dissociation: The Dissociative Processes Scale (Harrison & Watson, 1992), the amnesia and depersonalization scales from the Curious Experiences Survey (Goldberg, 1999) and the Multiscale Dissociation Inventory (Briere, 2002).