Background

Nightmares are sleep experiences caused by psychophysiological and social factors that occurs at all developmental stages. This study focused on Image Rescript (IR), which is common to cognitive-behavioral therapies recommended in adult nightmare treatment guidelines. IR is a technique to rewrite typical nightmare themes: such as killing, bereavement, separation, or being cornered, into scenarios: such as fighting back, escaping, asserting, being helped, or reconciliation, to make the endings positive.

Aims

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of IR on fear reductions of nightmares among university students.

Method

IR was implemented on 52 Japanese and 39 Canadian university students through a web-based experiment. A two factor-analysis of variance was performed to analyze the effect of IR implementation on two student groups separated by student’s nationality (Japanese and Canadian).

Results

Statistical analysis showed a significant interaction between the effects of IR implementation and students' nationality. IR implementation did have a significant main effect on the fear reduction of nightmares for both the Japanese and Canadian student groups. However, student’s nationality did not have a significant main effect on the fear reduction of nightmares. 

Conclusion

The results suggest that IR may have a strong effect on reducing the fear from nightmares among Japanese and Canadian university students. Results of the nationality comparison indicated that the effect of IR was stronger in Japan, suggesting that there are cultural differences in the IR typology of nightmares.