"To sleep, perchance to dream..." said Hamlet in his famous soliloquy, in the Shakespeare play of the same name. It's not so much the dreams PTSD sufferers are worried about, it's the nightmares that bring bad memories rushing back, or otherwise destroy a night's sleep. People with PTSD can be so agitated about their nightmares that they try to put off sleeping altogether, numbing themselves first with drugs or alcohol to keep the nightmares at bay. (Of course, that creates more problems than it solves, but it's perfectly understandable why that might happen.) (That's an EEG diagram of healthy, uninterrupted sleep, by the way, at left.) Now, one novel technique, publicized by a military trauma specialist, may hold out some hope to those whose experience of nightmares prevents them from getting a good night's (and restorative night's) sleep, so crucial to good health, psychologically and physiologically speaking.
In an article published in the Air Force Times of August 9, 2007, linked here, Navy Commander and combat psychologist Beverly Dexter, Ph.D. discusses a somewhat controversial concept she's developed that apparently helps some troops sleep better through the night. The concept is called "planned dream intervention," although it might more accurately be called, "proactive nightmare intervention," because the goal is to keep a terrifying nightmare from interrupting an otherwise good night's sleep -- essentially by seeing it through to its conclusion, the very thing the sleeping person beset with nightmares usually is too terrified to let actually happen. I have no idea what to make of this whole concept, and whether it's the concept that's confusing, or the article that describes it just not doing a good enough job of conveying how it really works. Or, maybe the concept itself has some kinks to work through. What sort of universal applicability does it have? Only to some types of nightmare sufferers, or does it have validity for all? Would some types of patients benefit more from this than others? Does it matter how long (in terms of months or years) people have had the nightmares for? These and other questions are not really addressed in the article. It sounds like Dr. Dexter herself says that the concept sounds too good to be true, but she claims it really works, and the article lists a number of examples of people who it's helped. From the article, it also seems like it's generated a certain amount of buzz as a topic, among troops and military chaplains. Dr. Dexter, whose bio is linked here, is planning a book on the subject, to come out sometime in 2008. The book's tentative title is "No More Nightmares: How to Use Planned Dream Intervention to End Nightmares," but it doesn't seem to be in print yet -- at least, Amazon doesn't have it listed.
According to the article, Dr. Dexter served as the chief of the Combat Stress and Readiness Clinic at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq, and works at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, VA when she's not deployed.
