Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Impact of fearful attachment style on nightmares and disturbed sleep in psychiatric inpatients.

The article below may contain offensive and/or incorrect content.

Sleep disturbances, especially nightmares, are common in psychiatric populations (Winokur, 2015). This study used an archival data set of 1,092 patients from an inpatient psychiatric hospital to explore the relationships between adult attachment style, nightmare frequency, disturbed sleep due to nightmares, and difficulty falling asleep due to fear of nightmares. Expanding on previous research conducted by Belfiore and Pietrowsky (2017), this study examined whether fearful attachment style and trait neuroticism predicted disturbed sleep due to nightmares above and beyond trait neuroticism alone. In addition, this study examined whether fearful attachment style and trauma history predicted disturbed sleep due to nightmares above and beyond trauma history alone. The results suggest that patients with a fearful attachment style report significantly more difficulty falling asleep due to fear of having nightmares than patients with secure, preoccupied, or dismissing attachment styles. Fearful attachment style and trait neuroticism were more predictive of disturbed sleep due to nightmares than trait neuroticism alone. Likewise, fearful attachment style and history of trauma were more predictive of disturbed sleep due to nightmares than history of trauma alone. Patients with a secure attachment style reported less disturbed sleep due to nightmares than patients with fearful, preoccupied, or dismissing attachment styles, even after controlling for trauma. This suggests that secure attachment is a protective factor for sleep in patients with a history of trauma. These findings expand upon previous research that has found participants with fearful attachment styles report more nightmare distress than participants with secure, preoccupied, or dismissing attachment styles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)