Explanations of sleep paralysis among Egyptian college students and the general population in Egypt and Denmark

Bibliographic Data

ID2394972
AuthorsBaland Jalal (0000-0002-0419-7336, University of California San Diego, corresponding author), Joseph Simons-Rudolph (North Carolina State University), Bamo Jalal (0000-0002-0893-4698, University of Copenhagen), Joseph Simons‐Rudolph (0000-0002-0251-8087, University of Copenhagen), Devon E Hinton (Harvard Medical School)
Year2014
Volume51
Issue2
Pages158-175
Publication date2014-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTranscultural Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-4615 • E-ISSN: 1461-7471
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1363461513503378
PMID24084761
OpenAlexW2147603291
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited16

This cross-cultural study compared explanations of sleep paralysis (SP) in two countries and two groups with different levels of education in one country. Comparisons were made between individuals having experienced SP at least once in a lifetime from Cairo, Egypt ( n = 89), Copenhagen, Denmark ( n = 59), and the American University in Cairo, Egypt ( n = 44). As hypothesized, participants from the general Egyptian population were more likely to endorse supernatural causal explanation of their SP compared to participants from Denmark; participants from the American University in Cairo were less likely to endorse supernatural causes of their SP compared to participants from the general Egyptian population. Moreover, participants from the American University in Cairo were marginally significantly more likely to endorse supernatural causes of their SP compared to participants from Denmark. Additionally, we explored which culturally bound explanations and beliefs about SP existed in Egypt and Denmark. We found that nearly half (48%) of the participants from the general Egyptian population believed their SP to be caused by the Jinn, a spirit-like creature with roots in Islamic tradition, which constitutes a culturally bound interpretation of the phenomenology of SP in this region of the world. Case studies are presented to illustrate these findings

Insomnia · Islam · Population · Psychiatry · Sleep disorder · Sleep paralysis · Sociology · Demography · History · Medicine · Psychology · Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments · Sleep and related disorders · Sleep and Wakefulness Research