Boys carrying school bags and running away in the early hours of the morning to frighten their parents is actually the scourge of "sleepwalking"

Source: Shenyang Evening News

"In the early hours of the morning, the door of the house was open and the 27-year-old woman was gone! She had already slept at home, and at dawn she found that she had come all the way to the mountain, and her clothes were full of grass..." Recently, the WeChat circle of friends was brushed by a young Dalian girl's sleepwalking. On September 24, Liu Changhui, a psychologist at Shenyang Jingwei Center, said in an interview with Shenyang Evening News and Shen Bao Rong Media that sleepwalking falls under the category of mental illness. By telling the stories he had treated, he analyzed how sleepwalking should be treated.

Case 1 At dawn the woman finds herself on the mountain

On September 21, a bizarre incident occurred in a residential area in Dalian: The night before, Ai Jia (pseudonym), a 27-year-old woman, went to bed as usual. At 5:00 a.m. on the 21st, Mr. Fan, a family member, found that Ai Jia was missing, the door was not closed, and there was a slit. Her phone is still at home, where have people gone?

Mr. Fan and other family members began to search around the community and tried to find clues through surveillance video. However, after searching for most of the day, no trace of Aijia was found. After receiving the request for help, the Dalian Zhongshan Blue Sky Rescue Team deployed its forces to carry out a search operation.

At about 16:00 on the 21st, when the family searched in the corridor of the residential building in the community, they found Aijia sleeping. Aijia is a normal girl, why does she sleep here?

Aijia's words surprised the family. How she got out of the house, she can't tell. All she remembered was that at dawn she found herself on a hill. At that time, she was covered in grass, and it was obvious that she had crossed the mountains to get here. She realized that something was wrong and prepared to go down the hill to get home.

After descending the mountain, she fell asleep in a daze until she was found by her family. The whole time, she only remembered the part of herself on the mountain. During this time, Aijia once climbed over the guardrail and crossed the road. Fortunately, she did not fall into a ditch or be hit by a vehicle.

Family members say Aijia's behavior should be sleepwalking. Last year, when AiJia was working in Shaanxi, a similar situation occurred. At that time, Aijia had inexplicably disappeared at night, and then she returned to her place of residence on her own. This time, because Aijia has no memory of the things along the way, where she sleepwalked is still a mystery for the time being.

Case 2 A 17-year-old boy sleepwalked to the Shenyang Expo Park

Liu Changhui introduced that he has taken over the treatment of sleepwalking patients in the past clinic, including the experience of a 17-year-old high school boy, which makes him remember it vividly. The boy's first illness was in the early hours of the morning, he originally slept in his bed at home, but in the early morning his parents found that their son was gone! All indications are that the son did not subjectively run away from home, but did carry a backpack.

After the boy left home, he walked north, crossing many streets and alleys, until he walked out for seven or eight kilometers. From the surveillance of the transfer, I saw that he was carrying a school bag as if he were going to school, and it was normal to cross the street. When he reached an intersection, the sudden sound of the car horn made him feel excited and immediately woke up. At this time, he was very frightened, he did not know where he was, and he did not know how to get here. So he borrowed a passerby's mobile phone to call his parents, and the parents rushed to pick up their son and take them home.

After a month, it was still the same time period, and the boy was sleepwalking away again. This time, surveillance showed that he walked in the direction of Qipan Mountain, walked to the west gate of the Shenyang World Expo Park, and woke up under the desperate call of the staff.

The boy was sent to the Shenyang Jingwei Center, where Liu Changhui was diagnosed with sleepwalking, which was subdivided into sleepwalking disorder. Two wanderings, stemming from two incidents: the first time, the English test was not good; The second time, the math test failed. The boy did not know how to explain, the ideological pressure was very large, so there was a wandering. After psychological treatment, the boy was quickly cured and never had a similar situation.

Case 3 The patient walked around and went back to bed

Liu Changhui introduced that there was a person who once followed a sleepwalking roommate. It was late at night, and the two of them were lying on the bed reading a book together, but they didn't expect that the roommate was sleepy and asleep. He noticed that his roommate had slowly gotten up, put on his shoes and walked in the direction of the door. He called out to his roommate, "What are you going to do," but the roommate didn't respond. He saw his roommate dodge the clothesline in slow motion (otherwise he would have cut his neck), dodged a series of obstacles, and finally walked outside for a walk, returned to the bedroom, and lay down on the bed to continue sleeping. The next day, my roommate didn't remember anything about the above.

Case 4 The husband opens the window and wants to jump

Liu Changhui also told reporters a case: at midnight, a wife found that her sleeping husband suddenly got up, wearing only pants and opened the door, she asked him but did not get a response, so she followed all the way behind. Unexpectedly, after walking around the building, the husband turned back home and suddenly opened the window to jump out. Seeing that the husband could not be woken up, the wife was in a hurry to play a whistle in the husband's ear, and the husband suddenly woke up, but he knew nothing about the above things.

psychoanalysis

People who encounter sleepwalking

It is best to guide it back to bed to sleep

Liu Changhui said that carefully investigating the causes, the above-mentioned cases of high school boys belong to "dissociative amnesia", on the one hand, they show a serious sleepwalking unconscious state (forgetting), on the other hand, they show the ability to engage in various complex activities (such as avoiding motor vehicles, crossing traffic lights, etc.), and take care of themselves in an orderly manner.

This kind of amnesia belongs to psychogenic amnesia, the patient does not have organic damage such as head and brain trauma, but suddenly loses memory of the major events they experience, and even presents self-shielding in the sleepwalking state; Forgotten events are often associated with traumatic or stressful events and are not unmeasurable for accidental reasons. If it is limited to events that occurred in a certain period of time and cannot be recalled, it is called limited or selective forgetting. In this regard, the person should be sent to receive psychological treatment as soon as possible, as long as the cause is found, symptomatic treatment can be provided.

Finally, Liu Changhui reminded that people who encounter sleepwalking are best guided back to bed to sleep, and once they find that their behavior is dangerous, they need to wake up the person immediately. However, this can sometimes trigger palpitations or even sudden death, so caution is required. (Shenyang Evening News, Shen Bao Rong Media Senior Reporter Tang Kuiyang)