Scientists To Explore Link Between Dreams, Nightmares, Anxiety And Religion

A new first-of-its-kind study to be carried out by The University of Western Australia will explore the relationship between dreams, nightmares and religion.

“Death anxiety has never been looked at in the context of poor sleep and dreaming, so we’re interested to see if there is a link.”

Dr Ian Dunican, UWA Centre for Sleep Science
The ‘dream team’ of sleep researchers led by Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Dr Ian Dunican from UWA’s Centre for Sleep Science includes researchers from the University of Sydney and Monash University.

Dr Dunican said researchers would look to tackle two major questions and were looking for participants aged 18 or over to participate in the online survey.

Visual depicting woman floating away on her dreams

“The first question looks at how religion or spirituality influences our dreams and nightmares and does it make us less anxious and worried, and the second, when we experience more nightmares, do we have more general anxiety and or death anxiety,” Dr Dunican said.

“We know from previous research during the pandemic by Hailey Meaklim, that people had more death-related nightmares, which were associated with higher levels of anxiety and insomnia.

“However, death anxiety has never been looked at in the context of poor sleep and dreaming, so we’re interested to see if there is a link.”

Religious, or spiritual practice may be beneficial in reducing nightmares, insomnia and anxiety as previous research of more than 2,000 scientific papers has shown that a religious or spiritual practice benefits our health.

However, no one had investigated the relationship between nightmares, anxiety, insomnia and sleep quality, Dr Dunican said.

The online survey takes about 20 minutes to complete and asks questions about participants’ dreams, sleep quality, anxiety and religious or spiritual practices.

“Involvement in the study may help us to support people with sleep and psychological problems in the future,” Dr Dunican said.

A study report may be submitted for publication, but individual participants would not be identifiable as the survey was anonymous, and Dr Dunican said no individual data would be shared.