Abstract Mkid 71

The present study investigated dream recall frequency and dream content of psychiatric inpatients in comparison with healthy controls and in relation to waking psychopathology. Patients’ dream recall frequency was related to low sleep quality, frequent nocturnal awakenings and thin boundaries and did not differ substantially from that of healthy controls if methodological issues are taken into account. Dream content seems to reflect waking-life symptoms, e.g., dreams of depressed patients showed themes of depression more often. The results of our approach, in which we measured waking symptoms psychometrically and correlated these measures with dream content rating scales, indicate that the diagnostic classification is probably not related to dream content primarily but rather the severity of the specific symptoms such as depressive mood or psychotic symptomatology. In addition, specific dream themes may be related to severity of symptoms within a diagnostic subgroup (e.g., death themes in depressed patients). Future studies should investigate these relationships in a longitudinal design and include other variables such as personality, cognitive measures and motivation since these factors may affect dream recall as well as dream content in patients and may help to explain the differences in dream variables between patients and healthy controls.