«Nightmares are one of the most persistent symptoms of trauma,» posits Jon-Håkon Schultz, a Norwegian educational psychologist and researcher. Schultz, whom I have interviewed by phone, is at the heart of Daniel Benjamin Wheeler’s short documentary Reclaiming the Night (2023), which engages with the topic of trauma-induced nightmares among children affected by war and displacement.
Too scared to cry
The film opens with a group of youths at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT) listening intently as the professor recounts the events of 1976, which became the central focus of American psychiatrist Lenore Terr’s book on childhood trauma, Too Scared to Cry. «It’s 1976. Here, we see a school bus where 26 children were on board. They were [kidnapped] and taken away for 27 hours. [For] 16 of these hours they were buried underground,» Schultz says, succinctly describing the bizarre event, known as the 1976 Chowchilla bus kidnapping.
Originally published in 1990, Too Scared to Cry was one the seminal books that examined the effects of severe trauma on children. «There had been a lot of research on the adults’ responses to traumatic events, especially after World War II and the Vietnam War. But there was little documentation of how traumatic stress impacted children,» Schultz notes in the phone interview, adding that he found the book «fascinating» in offering insight into the specificities of childhood trauma. As Schultz recounts in the film, his research interest in children’s nightmares matured during his work in Northern Uganda, which he carried out upon the invitation of the Norwegian Refugee Council in late 2006. The region was worn out from some 20 years of civil war, with thousands moulded into child soldiers. Many kids struggled to sleep, and school was often the safest place.
The camera, helmed by Polish cinematographer Kacper Czubak, quietly accompanies the researcher as he departs Norway to visit Beirut in the aftermath of the port blasts that had torn through the Lebanese capital. The explosions spawned a revival of nightmares for many refugee children in Beirut, who had already been traumatised by war and displacement. Souad, a reticent teen who had fled from Syria in 2016, was one of them. Her post-traumatic nightmares were set off after witnessing the lifeless body of her uncle, beaten up and shot by IS militants. To Souad, transforming her nightmare entailed reimagining a familiar scenario of her family at the kitchen table, while purposefully inserting an image of her uncle joining them—which is visualised in the film through animations. Her nightmares seemed to have ultimately ebbed, resuming again in the wake of the port blasts.
«Nightmares are one of the most persistent symptoms of trauma»
8-week transformation
According to Schultz, the delicate process of transforming children’s nightmares generally takes place in the course of eight weeks (the final step of the Better Learning Programme), without the participation of sleep specialists. First, a child is encouraged to sketch a recurrent nightmare, without dwelling on a drawing. In the next sessions, the child is invited to consider making changes to the drawing, be it modifying colours to milder tones or swapping garments, from uniform to plain clothes, which are less threatening. «There is a breakthrough when a child feels they can influence the nightmare,» Schulz explains in the phone interview. «It is about taking the nightmare, the scariest event that you have experienced, and somewhat recreating it on paper, and then taking control of it in the safety of the day.» Navigating their nightmares in a familiar environment of a school setting, aided by their teacher and school psychologist, the child may be able to conjure up other scenarios in their sleeping life. As Schultz notes, nightmares tend to steadily decrease during the intervention, starting from—for instance—five nightmares down to one or two a week. The numbers vary depending on a cohort, however, many manage to reduce their nightmares all the way down to zero. «It’s not that dangerous to talk about nightmares during the daytime. And that’s what we do. We create a safe setting where you can talk about the terrible thing,» the researcher says.
Gaza
While the short film does not venture to other territories, mostly centring on Lebanon, which hosts one of the highest numbers of refugees per capita, it felt imperative during the phone interview to put a question about Schultz’s previous work in Gaza, given the urgency of the moment. Stationed in Gaza for half a year in 2016, Schultz worked—alongside others—on integrating the nightmare intervention into the school system. «We saw a high nightmare prevalence in Gaza in 2016, 2017, and 2018, in particular in places with heightened exposure [to violence and conflict].» By the end of the intervention, a palpable decrease in nightmares among children was observed. «The findings were optimistic because that meant that we could actually deal with those nightmares. We could reduce them in most cases, or [at times with further support] even completely get rid of them.”
Detailing on «the cumulative trauma of chronic ethnic-political violence,» an NPR article from November 2023 argues that it was scarring the mental health of Gazan children, who make up about half of its population, even before this war was unfurled. «Most of them have never known a life without the threat of violence and conflict,» the author states. According to The Guardian article from October 2023, a 15-year-old living in Gaza has lived through «five periods of intense bombardment» in their life: 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2021, and from 2023 onward. An article from April 2024, published in The Observer (The Guardian), talks about a generation that «has grown up knowing nothing but cyclical escalation.» «Trauma in Palestine is collective and continuous. PTSD is when your mind is stuck in a traumatic loop. In Palestine, the loop is reality,» the author pens.
The upsurge of violence in the region has prompted fresh concerns about the already existing mental health crisis among children in Gaza, with many safe spaces completely ripped out. To start addressing children’s post-traumatic nightmares in Gaza, a return to normal is necessary, Schultz argues in the phone interview. «What we hope is that as soon as there is a possibility to start up some sort of schooling again in Gaza, [we can start work with the nightmares]. «For the children in Gaza, one of the most important things is to get back to school. And when they are back to school, when there is a ceasefire—a lasting ceasefire—then there will be a possibility to deal with their nightmares.»
