If dreams are really the window into the soul, then by studying and manipulating what we experience in our dreams we can affect real change on our emotional and mental well being during our waking hours as well.
Such is the premise of a fascinating study underway now at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago.
The study focuses on helping people who are suffering from clinical depression after a divorce or separation to recover mentally and cope with the emotional trauma of the life-changing event. They are hopeful that the results on their work will shed important insight on why some people seem to be able to overcome their depression and move on, while others languish in a depressed state for long periods of time before showing any improvement.
The team at the Sleep Disorder Service believes that people will be able to adjust more rapidly and have better coping skills if they are able to construct and recall well-developed, emotionally rich dreams. Their hypothesis was that if dreams that involve the ex-spouse became less frequent and less negative, then depression would remit.
Indeed, it seems they are on to something. The preliminary data from the study showed that when dreams of the ex-spouse were seen in a casual or distant manner, the recently separated or divorced person began to recover and cope with this life change. Those who were not coping well with a recent marital separation tended to have sparse dreams, and if the ex-partner appeared at all in the dreams, they were seen in a negative role, often as weak, rejecting or punishing.
This same early data seems to validate the belief that emotional problem solving takes place during dreaming. During the course of the Study, 9 of the 12 patients involved improved enough over an eight-month period that they no longer tested as "clinically depressed" on follow-up exams. Further studies with a wider number of participants are planned to determine if the results hold true for a larger test base. They also plan to include a number of people who are adjusting well to divorce so that they can compare the dreams between the two test groups of subjects. They hope to be able to chart how their dreams change over time and connect that to their changing emotional state and level of coping skills.
Eventually, home-based tools that help to monitor dreams and record impressions so that they can be tracked over time may become a valuable tool in helping to treat depression. Teaching people how to manipulate their dreams just might be the stuff that happier lives and sweet dreams are made of.
Source: Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center
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