Parasomnias in Adults

The term parasomnia, meaning “around sleep,” refers to a group of disorders that are characterized by “unpleasant or undesirable behavioral or experiential phenomena that occur predominantly or exclusively during the sleep period” (1) . Parasomnias have been categorized by the sleep state from which they arise, for example, nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, or those that are not specific to sleep state. They can also be categorized based on whether they are primary disorders of the sleep state from which they arise (e.g., sleepwalking) or are secondary to other medical or psychiatric disorders (e.g., nocturnal panic attacks). REM sleep behavior disorder and childhood parasomnias are covered elsewhere. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.