Nocturnal re-experiencing more than forty years after war trauma

The aim of this study was the examination of Posttraumatic Nightmares (PTNM) and Posttraumatic Anxiety Dreams (PTAD) in Dutch combat veterans and World War II victims. Participants (outpatients; n = 223) were administered a standardized psychiatric interview, the Impact of Event Scale, the SCL-90, the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale, and an interview on posttraumatic nocturnal re-experiencing. Prevalence of PTNM was 56%. Patients with PTNM, even those who were not diagnosed with PTSD, had significantly more psychiatric complaints than patients with no PTNM. Analysis of PTNM demonstrated that they were often experienced as exact replications of the original traumatic events. Replicative PTNM often implicated dream recurrence. Traumatic experiences before the age of 5 resulted in nonreplicative PTNM only. Unlike nonreplicative PTNM, replicative PTNM seemed to be correlated with several intrusion subscales.