Patient's question:
How to distinguish between night terrors and nightmares, and how to treat them! My child falls asleep, then cries uncontrollably without waking up, can't be woken up, crying hard! Once woken up and saying a word, they start crying again! Crying very hard, what's going on?Doctor's answer:
Is it like this every night? The psychological and physiological mechanisms of this condition are not yet fully understood. It is generally believed that this condition may be caused by the immaturity of the child's brain development, the unimproved physiological function of deep sleep and its regulation. When the aforementioned psychosocial factors affect the child, they cause the child's deep sleep physiological process to occur abnormally again, unable to normally transition from deep sleep to light sleep, thus leading to night terrors. Nightmares refer to the recurrence of nightmares during deep sleep, where frightening scenes or terrible events appear in the dream. After waking up from a nightmare, one can vividly recall the content of the nightmare.