title: Self-reported sleep disturbances in patients with dissociative identity disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder and how they relate to cognitive failures and fantasy proneness.
abstract: Sleep disturbances, fantasy proneness, cognitive failures, and dissociative symptoms are related to each other. However, the co-occurrence of these phenomena has been primarily studied in non-clinical samples. We investigated the correlations between these phenomena in dissociative identity disorder (DID) patients, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients, and healthy controls. Both patient groups reported more sleep problems and lower sleep quality and displayed higher levels of fantasy proneness and cognitive failures than controls. However, the two patient groups did not differ with regard to these variables. Moreover, a higher level of unusual sleep experiences tended to predict participants belonging to the DID group, while specifically a lower sleep quality and more cognitive failures tended to predict participants belonging to the PTSD group.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University , Maastricht , Netherlands.
authors.forename: Dalena
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: van Heugten-van der Kloet
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Groningen , Groningen , Netherlands.
authors.forename: Rafaele
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Huntjens
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University , Maastricht , Netherlands.
authors.forename: Timo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Giesbrecht
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University , Maastricht , Netherlands.
authors.forename: Harald
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Merckelbach
keywords: cognitive failures; dissociative symptoms; fantasy proneness; sleep quality; unusual sleep experiences