Positive symptoms of schizophrenia have been proposed to be an intrusion of dreaming in wakefulness; conversely, psychotic patients’ abnormal cognitive and behavioral features could overflow into sleep, so that their dreams would differ from those of healthy people. Here we assess this hypothesis by comparing dream features of 46 patients affected by schizophrenic spectrum disorders to those of 28 healthy controls. In patients, we also investigated correlations of dream variables with symptom severity and verbal fluency. Overall, patients reported fewer and shorter dreams, with a general impoverishment of content (including characters, settings, interactions) and higher spatiotemporal bizarreness. The number of emotions, mainly negative ones, was lower in patients’ reports and correlated inversely with symptom severity. Verbal fluency correlated positively with dream report length and negatively with perceptive bizarreness. In conclusion, our data show a significant impoverishment of dream reports in psychotic patients versus controls. Future research should investigate to what extent this profile of results depends on impaired verbal fluency or on impaired mechanisms of dream generation in this population. Moreover, in line with theories on the role of dreaming in emotion regulation, our data suggest that this function could be impaired in psychoses and related to symptom severity.

Recently, Loscalzo and Giannini have proposed Studyholism as a possible new clinical condition, highlighting its potential antecedents and outcomes. The present study investigates the moderating role of Internet addiction in the relationship between Studyholism, academic exhaustion and insomnia. Three hundred and eighteen Italian university students (85.50% female; mean age = 22.98 ± 4.34) participated in the survey during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The two moderation models were tested using the structural equation model with Mplus 7. Results showed a significant direct effect of Studyholism on both academic exhaustion and insomnia and also confirmed the moderating role of Internet addiction in the aforementioned relationships. Although there is a linear relationship between Studyholism and the outcomes, at lower levels of Internet addiction, there is a greater effect of Studyholism on both academic exhaustion and insomnia than at medium and high levels of Internet addiction. Based on these findings, we suggest screening students who report insomnia and academic exhaustion for both Internet addiction and Studyholism, as they might both contribute to these negative health-related aspects.

Good sleep is essential for health, yet sleep is often overlooked due to academic, occupational, and social demands. This study investigates whether attending a pre-existing university course about sleep can improve students’ beliefs and attitudes about sleep, subjective sleep quality, and pre-sleep arousal. Methods: Seventy-five volunteer students (40 F, age = 21.5±3.78) completed the Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep (DBAS), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and the Pre-Sleep Arousal Scale (PSAS) before attending a 3-month pre-existing course in Sleep Psychology (N = 50, 22 F, age = 21.5±2.40, S group) or in History of Psychology (N = 25, 18 F, age = 21.5±1.83, H group). At the end of each course, the same three questionnaires were administered. Results: Our results showed that, at the post-test, the S group improved sleep quality, reduced sleep disturbances, decreased cognitive pre-sleep arousal, and reduced dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep. Conclusions: These data suggest that attending a sleep course improves subjective sleep quality and pre-sleep arousal by reducing dysfunctional beliefs. These findings underscore the potential benefits of integrating sleep education into university curricula and reinforce the importance of addressing sleep as a key component of students’ health and well-being.

Dreams and positive symptoms of schizophrenia are similar in many aspects, such as bizarre-ness, impairment of reality testing, intense emotional participation. Hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thoughts have been proposed to be an intrusion of the dreaming state in wake-fulness: conversely, psychotic patients’ abnormal cognitive and behavioral features could over-flow into sleep, transferring peculiar features to their dreams which would differ, in quantity and quality, from those of healthy people. Here we assess this latter hypothesis by analyzing the dreams of 46 patients, hosted in a residential facility or in a day-treatment center, affected by disorders of the schizophrenic spectrum with psychotic symptoms, versus those of 28 healthy controls, in terms of several quantitative and qualitative characteristics. In patients, we also in-vestigated whether dream variables correlated with the severity of symptoms assessed via the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale. Overall, patients reported fewer and shorter dreams than controls, with a reduction of many ele-ments like characters and settings. The greatest differences regarded emotions, which were less frequent in patients and inversely correlated with symptoms’ severity. This evidence supports the hypothesis that dreams are crucial for emotion regulation during wakefulness and that this func-tion could be totally or partially ineffective in psychoses.