Deep down, we all know to fear what goes bump in the night. But what if it's you who is the cause? Night terrors and somnambulism are both unusual and potentially dangerous sleep disorders that may be more closely related than previously understood...
Parasomnias are chilling disorders to either witness or experience, which I know personally by both suffering from and watching family suffer from them. Defined as "a group of sleep-wake disorders that involve unusual behaviors or abnormal physiological events during sleep" (Burke 411), they come in several different types. However, having one type of parasomnia doesn't preclude that someone cannot suffer another— or, perhaps, a strange mixture of the two. This is because "Sleepwalking and night terrors are considered to be manifestations of the same nosologic continuum" (Waldemar 1). This paper will focus on the parallels, contrasts, and even the combination of sleepwalking, or somnambulism, and sleep terrors, or night terrors. While such a parasomnia is only considered necessary to diagnose if it causes "clinically significant distress or impairment do clinicians" (ibid), the existence of any of the strange symptoms of either somnambulism or night terrors can cause a certain level of alarm in anyone dealing with it or has a loved one dealing with it; or, especially, when dealing with both. Thus, this paper will consider not only the definitions and symptoms of these specific types of parasomnias, but also the potential causes and cures with the hope that it can educate the readers who may be dealing with either disorder or, quite possibly, both of them. By understanding how much these disorders parallel each other and even intersect more than previously understood, the individual parasomnias themselves may become clearer.
Starting with night terrors, they are defined as: "partial arousals from slow-wave sleep "often accompanied by a cry or piercing scream, accompanied by auto-nomic nervous system and behavioral manifestations of in-tense fear... Sometimes there is prolonged inconsolability associated with a sleep terror" (Dominque 1). They occur during slow-wave or REM sleep, usually- but not necessarily always- during the first wave of the night (Szelenberger), or within the first two hours after an individual falls asleep. When it comes to night terrors, "Episodes can last 5-10 minutes, but have been known to last for up to 30 minutes" (Gardner), and they can happen more than once in the night. Night terrors are far more common in infants and children than in adolescence and adulthood, with "As many as 37% of 18-month-olds and nearly 20% of 30-month-olds experiencing sleep terrors, compared to 2% of the adult population.... [because] Most childhood cases spontaneously disappear in adolescence" (Burke).
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(Szelenberger)
Next, somnambulism is defined as: "complex behaviors that are usually initiated during partial arousals from slow-wave sleep... The sleepwalking individual is disoriented in time and space, with slow speech, with severely diminished mentation, and blunted response to questions or requests. There is often prominent anterograde and retrograde memory impairment... but not always" (Dominique 1). Sleepwalking is a slight misnomer, since somnambulism covers a wide range of unwanted physical activites that occur during sleep, including "talking, walking, and sitting up in bed, and even violent acts with open eyes and blank looks occur unknowingly during sleep while sufferer believed to be in sleep" (Wajiha). Like night terrors, somnambulism also occurs during slow-wave or non-REM sleep. Violence is a potential symptom of somnambulism, either self-inflicted or against others, and is more frequent in CO-SW (childhood-onset sleepwalking) in general and in males with AO-SW (adult-onset sleepwalking) (Bargiotas). During one test "Among 63 sleepwalkers, 45% had ≥1 episodes/month, 54% had partial recall of the episodes" (Bargiotas). Sleepwalking is more common in adulthood than sleep terrors are, but sleepwalking in childhood is more common than sleepwalking in adulthood since "10-30% of children have had an episode of sleepwalking" (Burke).
