Night terrors happen in healthy children, and are a part of normal development. They are not usually associated with serious emotional or psychological problems. There is no link with epilepsy. Night terrors may become worse with illness and fevers, or if your child becomes very worried about something.
Most kids outgrow night terrors. But talk to your doctor if: The night terrors last longer than 30 minutes, happen more than once a week, or prevent your child from getting enough sleep. Your child seems very sad, fearful, or stressed during the day.
What are night terrors? Night terrors are a sleep disorder in which a person quickly awakens from sleep in a terrified state. The cause is unknown but night terrors are often triggered by fever, lack of sleep or periods of emotional tension, stress or conflict.
They don't usually happen more than once a night. Sometimes they happen regularly for weeks or months, then go away. Night terrors might seem scary to you, but they don't hurt your child. Children don't remember them in the morning and aren't aware of having had a bad dream or a fright.
Some people with PTSD experience night terrors, also known as sleep terrors. Night terrors are fairly common in children but not in adults, but trauma can cause them.
Adults are more likely to have night terrors if they have a history of: bipolar disorder. depression. anxiety.
Both sleep terrors and nightmares can occur in PTSD. That is they can be co-morbid with each other. Nightmares may be restructured through imagery rescripting, this includes PTSD related nightmares. However, PTSD related nightmares often change with the standard treatments for PTSD (CPT, PE & EMDR).
Cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis, biofeedback or relaxation therapy may help. Anticipatory awakening. This involves waking the person who has sleep terrors about 15 minutes before he or she usually experiences the event. Then the person stays awake for a few minutes before falling asleep again.
Night terrors stem from an arousal disorder, known as a parasomnia, which occur during deep sleep, says pediatric pulmonologist and sleep specialist Katharina Graw-Panzer, MD. They affect nearly 40% of children between 4 and 12–years-old, with 5-7 being the peak age range.
Night terrors are most common in preschool-aged children around 3 - 4 years old. But toddlers as young as 18 months - 2 years old, and children as old as 7 or 8 years, can experience them as well.
Night terrors are a disruptive sleep disorder (parasomnia). A person experiencing a night terror has symptoms like those of a nocturnal panic attack. One key difference is awareness. People experiencing night terrors are often unaware they're having them.
What causes night terrors? Night terrors are inherited, meaning a child gets the disorder from his or her parents and the condition runs in families. They occur in 2% of children and usually are not caused by psychological stress. Being overtired can trigger night terrors.
Other common parasomnias such as nightmares and night terrors have often been associated with psychopathology. Cross-sectional studies have also suggested that nightmares are related to psychosis proneness or schizotypy.
Beginning around puberty, people with ADHD are more likely to experience shorter sleep time, problems falling asleep and staying asleep, and a heightened risk of developing a sleep disorder. Nightmares are also common in children with ADHD. View Source , especially those with insomnia.
But, as with most easy solutions, there are downsides. A new study has found that preschoolers with a TV set in their bedroom slept worse than those who didn't have one. They also felt more tired upon waking and reported more episodes of nightmares, sleep terrors, and sleep talking.
See a GP if:
your child has night terrors several times a night or has them most nights.
DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria
Sleep terrors: Recurrent episodes of abrupt terror arousals from sleep, usually beginning with a panicky scream. There is intense fear and signs of autonomic arousal, such as mydriasis, tachycardia, rapid breathing, and sweating, during each episode.
Sleep terrors are more common under a number of conditions that can be controlled, at least to some degree, such as: sleep deprivation, going to bed with a full bladder, emotional stress, anxiety (including separation anxiety), bullying, a noisy sleeping environment and excessive alcohol or caffeine.
A child who is having a night terror is stuck halfway between being asleep and awake. They are awake enough to get out of bed, talk or scream and have their eyes open; but they are asleep in that they do not respond to a parent trying to console them. They usually don't remember the episode in the morning.
“During a night terror, a child may scream, talk or cry but not really be awake,” explains pediatric sleep disorders expert Vaishal Shah, MD, MPH. “If the light is on, you can see they're pale or sweaty. Their fight-or-flight response is fully activated.”
Yes, it's true! In fact, magnesium is commonly referred to as 'Nature's Tranquilizer'. Research has shown that Magnesium encourages a deeper and more restorative sleep which potentially means fewer night wakings and night terrors due to its calming effect on the brain 3.
Night terrors are caused by over-arousal of the central nervous system (CNS) during sleep.
Kids with symptoms like these don't necessarily have (or develop) a mental illness or disorder, and many times those experiences means nothing, Thompson says. But symptoms like these, especially on the more severe end of the spectrum, may be forerunners of psychotic illness like schizophrenia.
Moderate to low quality evidence finds frequent (weekly) nightmares were reported in 9% to 55% of people with schizophrenia. Around 15% reported sleep paralysis and 17% reported sleep-related eating disorders.