What are the therapy treatments for night terrors/sleep terrors?

Question

I need to know for my project. I need specific therapy treatments for people that have night terrors/sleep terrors.

Answer 1

This is something that I've experienced as a child and as an adult, so I can discuss some of the stages that I've seen.

I heartily favor the ideas in this article (1), though they say it in a much more complicated way than I would:
"Several studies in the last decades have shown that nightmares can be treated with several cognitive-behavioral techniques. The cognitive-restructuring technique imagery rehearsal therapy is the treatment of choice for nightmares, although a randomized controlled trial with an attention control-group has not yet been carried out. Nightmares are more than a symptom of a larger (anxiety) syndrome and need to be viewed from a sleep medicine perspective: nightmares are a highly prevalent and separate sleep disorder that can and should receive specific treatment."

My experience has been that in the long run treatments with medications hurt me while "cognitive-behavioral" methods were much slower but much more helpful.

The breathing techniques detailed by another answerer were one of the techniques that I have used and in their time and place I have found them to be helpful. The warning is that there is no one thing (technique) that always works all the time. At one extreme point, precipitated by a family death, I followed someone's suggestion to practice holding my tongue in the middle of my mouth, not letting it touch either palate or teeth. This prevents sub-vocalization and interrupts wild uncontrolled thinking, obsession, and helped me to get through the immediate crisis.

Night terrors can often be concurrent with other negative conditions. Dr. Gabor Maté (2) discusses ADD and in addition to medicines, he talks about non-medical behavioral treatments that have been around for thousands of years and that still are helpful for many of the anxiety problems that plague people.

You may notice from both my sources that there should be an examination for other involvements, for I do not believe that night terrors stand alone. My experience has been that as I've found relief (not medication) for night terrors, my restless thinking and "knock-me-on-the-floor with cold-sweats-and-puking" migraine headaches have moderated, even into remission.

I hope these references and my anecdotes help you with your research. I know that over a period of sixty years I have encountered many different techniques and while no one of them has been perfectly successful forever, those based upon cognitive-behavioral exercises have provided the most help with the least side effects and dangers of dependency. If there is no choice about dependency, I would rather the dependency be on moderate exercise, time with nature, breathing exercises and the like than have to depend on what I can get from the pharmacist or the pusher, even though I can justify it with "my doctor prescribes it for me."

Answer 2

Night terrors are _not_ the same thing as nightmares. You can't use breathing or balancing your checkbook or any other distraction technique b/c the person is in an altered state of consciousness when experiencing a night terror. They appear to be awake but are not. The advice by the pediatrician to just wait it out and hope it is outgrown is the best advice there is. There are no known therapy treatments for night terrors.

Answer 3

Breathing technique. A person must take time to control shallow breathing. Also get the mind busy with something else, like listening to music, writing something even as simple as balance the checkbook anything that takes consentration that will slow down the hyperventilation type breathing. Breathing slowly will stop a night terror within about 1 minute.

Answer 4

Don't ever take the sleeping pills route!!

1. They will damage your liver big time and you can get into serious health problems.

2. You will get hooked up on them and you won't be able to have a normal life any more if you don't take your pills everyday.

The sleeping pills industry is damaging our health by capitalizing on our ignorance, and by distracting people from effective and natural ways to deal with this problem. I had been taking prescription sleep medications [Ambien] for over 5 years. It stopped working and I simply took more. Still did not work. Nights were very difficult - medication put me to sleep but I would wake up after 2–3 hours with a strong sympathetic response (fast pulse, pounding heartbeat, wide awake alert). It was a very difficult cycle to break. I was really in bad shape due to lack of sleep.

After years of struggling I was able to cure my insomnia naturally and pretty fast. I followed the Sleep Tracks sleep optimization program, here is their official web -site if you want to take a look: http://www.insomniacure.net

Ohhh..and Good Luck!

Answer 5

I remember my cousin Maya who's now 11 years old having something similar, if not that, the summer I spent with them at their lake house. I was sleeping in the bed next to hers, and my aunt set their bed time to 8 pm so me and my brother thought it was way too early and wouldn't sleep, we would just stay up talking. I remember we would be whispering and all of a sudden Maya would be muttering some words, we were horrified the first time that happened to her, i touched her skin and she was sweating, then she started screaming and I woke her up and she was scared, trembling. I called her mom and she calmed her down, she went back to sleep and everything went back to normal. When we would talk about it with her the next day she would have no idea what we were talking about. I just suggest you go to like a psychiatrist and ask them about your Night Terrors and if that would be linked to your depression in any way.

Answer 6

My son had them until he was 9. Is most common in children with vivid imaginations. Pediatrician advised that he will outgrow it (which he did) and to avoid any kind of impressionable movies or books before my son went to bed.