Various researchers have demonstrated that people who have less social support are also more likely to have poorer mental and physical health. Currently, we are living through a pandemic which has reduced the amount of socialising many of us can do. This change has led to many new and unique ways to maintain our social support networks.
A study by UON Psychology Dr Romany McGuffog and A/Prof Mark Rubin explored an unusual explanation for the relation between social support and health. Specifically, they investigated dreams and sleep. Research surrounding dreams has been mixed: Some types of dreams have been found to be associated with better mental and physical health, but nightmares are related to more stress.
To clarify the role that dreams could play in the relation between social support and health, Romany and Mark broke down dreams into various components including dream emotions, dream bizarreness, recall, impact, and frequency of dreams/nightmares.
The results suggest that less social support is related to more negative dream emotions, higher impact of nightmares, and poorer sleep, and (then) also to poorer mental and physical health. In other words, it seems that people who experience good social support then experience more positive dreams and less nightmares, which provides better sleep and better mental health and physical health.
Does this mean that it might be possible to reduce the impact that having less social support can have on health if we can improve an individual’s sleep?
Romany will be presenting this research at the Early Career Researcher and Postgraduate conference of the Centre for Brain and Mental Health Research on October 16th at HMRI, JH Hospital.
For any questions or to discuss further, contact Romany at:
Romany.McGuffog@uon.edu.au | Twitter: @RomanyMcGuffog
