Nightmare distress mediated the correlation between autobiographical memory specificity and depression

TL;DR

This study shows that nightmare distress connects how specific people's memories are to their life stories and their level of depression.

Contribution

The study identifies nightmare distress as a mediator between autobiographical memory specificity and depression.

Findings

Nightmare distress mediates the relationship between autobiographical memory specificity and depression.

Both nightmare distress and memory specificity correlate with the impact of dreams on life stories.

No correlation was found between memory specificity or nightmare distress and dream bizarreness.

Abstract

In this study, we explored whether nightmare distress mediated the correlation between autobiographical memory specificity and depression. 112 participants provided their most recent dreams that happened within one month, and finished some scales that measured depression, autobiographical memory specificity, and nightmare distress. In line with our hypothesis, nightmare distress was the mediator that played a role in the relationship between autobiographical memory specificity and depression. In addition, we found that both nightmare distress and autobiographical memory specificity were correlated with the impact of a dream on one’s life story. By contrast, contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find any correlation between autobiographical memory specificity, or nightmare distress, and dream bizarreness. Potential implications from these results were discussed.

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