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Despite a surge of studies on the effects of COVID-19 on our well-being, we know little about how the pandemic is reflected in people’s spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as mind-wandering (or daydreaming) during wakefulness and dreaming during sleep. We investigated whether and how COVID-19 related general concern, anxiety, and daily worry...

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... used ecological momentary assessment to collect data in the UK and Australia during a four-month period (July-November 2020; see Figure 1). Participants first filled in a well-being questionnaire in which they reported their general COVID-19 related concern and anxiety, and whether they belonged to a COVID-19 risk group. ...
Context 2
... collected data in the UK and Australia during a four-month period (July-November 2020; see Figure 1a) via press releases and online social media advertisements. Altogether, 294 participants provided 2604 daily dream logs, and 261 participants provided 1767 daily mindwandering logs. ...

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... Indeed, it has been found that sleep quality and dream recall are associated, as people with lower sleep quality remembered dreams more frequently [8]. These results received further support as a recent study found dream recall and nightmare frequency to be solely associated with bad sleep quality and not with daily worries about COVID-19 [36]. ...
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The pandemic caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) had a huge impact on public mental health. This was also reflected in dreams. Not only did people start to remember more dreams, but dream content changed as themes like sickness, confinement, and—in the English-speaking world—even bugs began to dominate. This also led to an increase in nightmare frequency. There are various factors that contributed to this change in the dream landscape. Some people have started to sleep more and hereby spend more time in REM sleep, which is known to increase dream recall and further lead to bizarre and vivid dreams. On the other hand, stress and poor mental health had an impact on sleep, and sleep quality thus dropped in many individuals. Poor sleep quality can also lead to an increase in dream recall. Dreams are known to regulate mood, so the rise in dreams and the change in dream content could also reflect a reaction to the overall rise in stress and decline in mental health. Recent studies have shown that as the pandemic progresses, further changes in mental health, dream recall, and dream content arise, but data are still scarce. Further research could help understand the impact the pandemic still has on mental health and dreams, and how this impact is changing over the course of the pandemic.
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Starting from the idea that dreaming could be considered an index of the psychological health of individuals regarding the COVID-19 outbreak, a major risk of psychological maladjustment has been registered for maladaptive daydreamers (MDers; i.e., people with a compulsive fantasy activity associated with distress and psychological impairment). Nevertheless, there is a gap in literature about dreaming in MDers in general and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate differences in dreaming and dream content between probable MDers and non-MDers during the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy. A total of 3,857 Italian adults (664 probable MDers), completed the Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale (MDS-16) and the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire (MADRE). Among them, 1,095 participants (222 probable MDers) decided to recount their dreams, subsequently analysed through a cluster analysis performed by T-LAB software. Significantly higher levels of dream recall, emotional intensity of dreams, nightmare frequency, nightmare distress, recurring nightmares about daytime, lucid dreams, interest toward dreams, problem solving and creative dreams, and dreams affecting daytime mood emerged in probable MDers compared to non-MDers. No differences were observed in the emotional tone of dreams. From the quali–quantitative analysis of dream narratives, similar themes emerged in probable MDers and non-MDers, except for a cluster named Dreaming the loss of others, where the non-MDers variable is highly represented. Our results highlight some significant differences between probable MDers and non-MDers with respect to dreaming activity. The massive use of dream activity as an affective regulator emerges for both probable MDers and non-MDers during lockdown.