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Night Terrors in Children:Prevalenceand Influencing Factors
Michael Schredl, Ph.D.
Night terrors are defined as sudden arousals from slow wave sleep accompanied with
intense fear.They must be distinguished from nightmares,posttraumatic reenactments and
nocturnal panic attacks.The present study investigated the relationship between night ter-
ror frequency and sleep and waking-life behavior in children aged 6 to 11.The prevalence
rate of night terrors was 18 %and 4 %of the children experience night terrors once or more
a week.The results indicate that parasomnias such as nightmares,night terrors and sleep-
walking often occur together.In contrast to nightmare frequency,no substantial correlation
between personality and night terror frequency emerged.As expected,the occurrence of
stressors (hospitalization,school problems,parental divorce and amount of TV consump-
tion)was associated with night terrors.However,the pattern was gender specific.
Longitudinal studies should be carried out in order to investigate whether stress is also
responsible for intra-individual fluctuations.Such investigations may prove fruitful for devel-
oping and evaluating effective treatment strategies for night terrors in children.(Sleep and
Hypnosis 2001;3(2):68-72)
| Keywords: night terror, parasomnia, children, stress |
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