Smith, Dr. Carlyle

Addiction can lead to a plethora of health, social and economical problems. Substances are used for mood regulation, and therefore, waking day mood is extremely important during recovery of alcohol and drug addiction. The current study examined the effects of Meditation and Sleep Mentation Therapy on mood levels. All participants were male, and currently in treatment programs or early stages of recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. Participants were tested for anxiety and depression and were asked to provide a recent dream, prior and post to participating in the intervention. Dreams were scored using Hall and Van de Castle guidelines for scoring imagery. Results are consistent with previous research in that mood levels changed over the course of the meditation period. Implications for future research are discussed as well as applications of Sleep Mentation Therapy and Meditation in clinical and applied practice.

Author Keywords: Addiction, Dream Therapy, Meditation, Mood

Dreams that occur in bereavement have been mainly overlooked in the psychological literature. This study focuses on the most memorable dreams of the bereaved that contain imagery of the deceased. There were 52 participants who completed the study via email. The main goal of the study was to investigate the occurrence of common themes in the dreams that have the deceased as a character. It was hypothesized that the most memorable dreams are memorable because they positively influenced the dreamers waking life grief process, which was partially supported. Furthermore, it was expected that that the most memorable dreams will have a greater frequency of positive elements and a lower frequency of negative elements than the normative data on dreams, which was partially supported. These findings support past research on dreaming of the deceased and expand the impact that these types of dreams can have on the grief process.

Author Keywords: bereavement, deceased imagery, dream content, dreams, grief