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
Symptoms
By Mayo Clinic staffNightmares are parasomnias — undesirable experiences that occur during sleep. You've had a nightmare if:
- Your dream wakes you up
- You feel scared, anxious, angry, sad or disgusted as a result of your dream
- You can think clearly upon awakening, and can recall details of your dream
- Your dream occurs near the end of your sleep time
- Your dream keeps you from falling back to sleep easily
When to see a doctor
Occasional nightmares aren't usually a cause for concern. If your child has nightmares, you can simply mention them at a routine well-child exam.
Talk to your doctor earlier if your or your child's nightmares:
- Become more frequent
- Routinely disrupt sleep
- Cause you or your child to fear going to sleep
- Nightmares and other disturbing parasomnias. American Academy of Sleep Medicine. http://www.aasmnet.org..ces/FactSheets/NightmareParasom.pdf. Accessed June 1, 2009.
- Nightmares. American Academy of Sleep Medicine. http://www.sleepeducation.com/Disorder.aspx?id=37. Accessed June 1, 2009.
- Sleepiness diary. National Sleep Foundation. Accessed June 2, 2009.
- Simard V, et al. Longitudinal study of bad dreams in preschool-aged children: Prevalence, demographic correlates, risk and protective factors. Sleep. 2008;31:62.
