Nightmares in Adults

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Have you or someone you know have suffered from nightmares as an adult? When someone wakes up terrified and aghast due to some bad nightmare, they generally think that, as an adult, they are not supposed to get these nightmares. This causes them to either hide it or fake it. You also think that you are the only one who has the adult nightmare.

It is visualized that adults should be able to outgrow the nightmares as they grow mature. Let us see how common the nightmare in adults is? One out of every two adults has nightmares on occasion. And there are about 2% to 4 % of adults in the world who suffer from routine nightmares.

Get the hold on the causes of Nightmares

The causes of nightmares are very important to be determined to ensure that they are not causing lot of stress to your life. You can then make changes in your lifestyle/routine to ensure the occurrence of these nightmares go down. Some of the common causes of nightmares in adults are:

1. Anything from daily stress to trauma to watching scary movies can cause nightmares.
2. Late night snack gives the brain the signal to be active. This causes the nightmares to be more common. So avoid late night snacks.
3. There are some drugs like antidepressants and narcotics which causes the nightmares to occur in adults.

How to treat Nightmares in Adults?

There are many clinical trials and case reports which has driven the psychological and pharmacological treatments of nightmares. Treatment of nightmares has different evidence on the cure and hence suggests different outcomes.

Most effective treatment of nightmares related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is Prazosin which is alpha-1 noradrenergic antagonist. Some Tricyclic antidepressants and monoamine oxidase inhibitors were tested but their side effects have limited their usage.