Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffVarious factors can contribute to night terrors, including:
- Sleep deprivation
- Fatigue
- Stress
- Anxiety
- Fever
- Sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings
Night terrors sometimes are associated with underlying conditions that affect sleep, such as:
- Seizure disorders
- Sleep-disordered breathing — a group of disorders characterized by abnormal breathing patterns during sleep, the most common of which is obstructive sleep apnea
- Migraines
- Stroke
- Hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid)
- Head injuries or brain swelling
- Premenstrual period
In other cases, use of alcohol, illicit drugs or certain medications — including some antibiotics, antihistamines, sedatives and sleeping pills — can trigger night terror episodes.
- Parasomnias. The Merck Manuals: The Merck Manual for Healthcare Professionals. http://www.merck.com/mmpe/print/sec16/ch215/ch215f.html. Accessed June 3, 2009.
- Nguyen BH, et al. Sleep terrors in children: A prospective study of twins. Pediatrics. 2008;122:e1164.
- Sleep terrors. American Academy of Sleep Medicine. http://www.sleepeducation.com/Disorder.aspx?id=13. Accessed June 8, 2009.
- National sleep disorders research plan. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/prof/sleep/res_plan/section5/section5a.html. Accessed May 27, 2009.
- Stores G. Dramatic parasomnias. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 2001;94:173.
- Sleepiness diary. National Sleep Foundation. Accessed June 8, 2009.
