An international group of researchers led by Mahmoud Tarek Hefnawy collected articles on sleep paralysis from leading scientific databases (Pubmed, Scopus, and WoS). The authors did not conduct their own experiments but simply wanted to understand how widespread sleep paralysis is.
The scientists included 76 studies from 25 countries in their review, covering almost 170,000 people of various races and nationalities. The global prevalence of sleep paralysis was found to be 30%. However, most of the participants in the reviewed studies were psychiatric patients and students. People suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks are also at risk. Moreover, no difference was found between men and women.
Sleep paralysis is believed to involve hallucinations featuring a demon or incubus. Because of this, it causes fear and has become the source of numerous legends. However, as the statistics collected by the authors showed, only one in four people experience auditory and visual hallucinations, and only 4% experience visual hallucinations alone.
Have you experienced sleep paralysis without hallucinations?
The article was published in April 2024 in Neurology.
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