The Untold Connection between Nightmares and Delusional Disorders

“Mom! Can I sleep with you?” This is the most often asked question by a six to eight year old child. Many parents initially give in to their child’s request as they feel the child needs more time to understand the importance of sleeping alone. But one among ten mothers may try to find the real reason of their child’s fear. Most commonly children have fear of dark. Some frequently get nightmares where they visualize green eyed monsters or a giant dragon that is running behind them to gobble them up in one go. Some do not like loneliness. When the first and third reasons are somewhat acceptable and does not associate any medical symptom with itself, the second condition of regular fretful nightmares needs a serious watch. Here are some common patterns that can develop into a serious mental block in the future years of the child.

• Repeating patterns in nightmare

If the child is frequently seeing the same dream sequence, it definitely means some serious trouble in the brewing. The parent needs to observe the child’s behavioral pattern, the books he reads, the TV programmes that he watches and the friends he moves out with. If the reason for the nightmare is resultant of either of the above reasons, the child is just affected on the periphery. Unfortunately, if the child has a constrained and depressed mind set and is highly sensitive by nature, it is a must for the parent to connect to a child psychiatrist for further help.

• Delusional disorders

Delusions definition is simple. It is another variant of schizophrenia where the affected person hears voices that are inaudible to others. With delusion the person firmly believes the unreal exists and remains confused. Some common types of delusional disorders that will reflect in early child hood are through hallucinations and frequent terrors in the form of nightmares. Hence if these dream patterns continues above the age of 12, the child needs psychotic treatments to channelize their thoughts and get back to normalcy.

• How to help the child?

The children are parent’s treasure. Rather than forcing them to sleep alone and overcome the fear themselves as they have become “of age”, parents must step into the child’s shoes and find out what is disturbing them. Parents must help their child to understand what is real and what is non-existent and indulge the child into real world sports or games that makes the children grow physically and mentally strong.

What Are Types Of Delusional Disorder

There are many people who face the problem of delusion, but it is difficult to identify the person with this mental sickness because they normally socialize and do the work, apart from the respective area of their delusion. The delusions definition can be understood, as a firm and unshakeable belief in something which does not exist. 

Patient’s suffering from delusion experiences the incidents which can happen in real like too, such as conspiracy against the patient, accident, being followed, deceived, falling in love and poisoned. These situations are created inside the mind of patient which he believes with full convection, but in reality either the situations are not present or they are highly amplified.

This mental illness usually happens during the period of middle to late lifespan of patient, and women’s are more affected by this illness as compared with the men’s.

Following are the types of delusional disorder:

• Bizarre delusion:

In this situation the patient tends to imagine things and situations which are not possible to happen in real life.

For example: The patient has a strong belief that the internal organ of one person is exchanged with the internal organs of another person without any surgery and scar.

• Non-bizarre delusion:

In this type of delusion, the patient creates the situations in his mind which are possible in the existing life.

For example: The patient has a firm belief that someone is behind him everywhere.

• Mood-congruent delusion:

In mood-congruent delusion, the delusions are dependent or related to the patient’s mood or emotional state.
For example: The patient believes, that commentators of cricket match disapproves him or he firmly believes that he will fly and he will reach the top of the sky.

• Mood-neutral delusion:

In this type of delusion, the emotional state or mood of the patient doesn’t create any difference.

For example: The patient can have a belief that, an extra head is growing out from the side of his head. In this type of situation, the mood of patient is usually natural; they are not feeling depressive or manic.

The doctors have still not found the exact cause of delusion disorder, but there are few symptoms which help in identifying the mental sickness in patient. These symptoms include low mood, hallucinations, getting angry and getting irritated. With the help of early identification of illness, medications, psychotherapy a patient can be cured, but the most important is the love and support of family members and friends.