Parasomnias in Post-Secondary Students: Prevalence, Distress, and Coping Strategies

Parasomnias are a group of sleep disorders characterized by abnormal and unpleasant motor, verbal, or behavioral events that occur during sleep or during transitions between wake and sleep states. They disrupt sleep and can have a detrimental impact on the individual experiencing them. Our goal was to identify types of parasomnias and their prevalence in the current and recent post-secondary student population and to explore their coping strategies for parasomnias they found distressing. Seventy-seven post-secondary students completed the 21-item Munich Parasomnia Screening (MUPS) frequency scale. They also rated, on a 10-point scale, how disturbing each parasomnia experienced was. Not only did 92% percent of students report at least one parasomnia, but our results also indicate that the vast majority of students experienced several parasomnias. This led us to investigate the likelihood of the co-occurrence of different parasomnias. With respect to the level of subjectively experienced distress, the most prevalent parasomnias were not always the more disturbing. Coded open-ended responses about what students do about the disturbing parasomnias indicate that grounding strategies (i.e., coping strategies that help manage distressing feelings) and physical manipulation of one's body were the most common, although most participants indicated that in spite of distress, they do nothing to cope. In conclusion, our study found a strikingly high prevalence of parasomnias in this sample of young adults and a lack of knowledge about effective means of dealing with these. Therefore, we provide some accepted ways of dealing with these.