Mental Health & Wellness > Wellness Matters

When doctors struggle to find a diagnosis, dreams can help solve medical mysteries

By Meghan McCallum | Fact-checked by Barbara Bekiesz

Published February 6, 2025

Key Takeaways

Industry Buzz

“When practicing synchronicity-informed psychotherapy, therapists are advised to utilize their knowledge of the patient’s development, fantasies, transference, personality, therapeutic needs, and the symbolic meaning of the synchronistic event to guide interventions.” — Helen Marlo, PhD
"It was so startling—the impression from the dream was that it had to be dealt with immediately... Dying was my biggest fear." — Mark Ruffalo, Daily Express

What insights can we gather from dreams? Some dreams may reveal shocking medical information, such as Mark Ruffalo’s report of a precognitive dream leading to the discovery of his brain tumor.

Click here to read about Mark Ruffalo's dream that helped diagnose him with a brain tumor: Mark Ruffalo’s dream led to this rare diagnosis—what if his doctor had dismissed it?

Dreams have long been recognized as a potential source of information for medical conditions and diagnoses. Historian Christopher Klein has even reported on the physicians of Ancient Rome, who took dreams into consideration when diagnosing and treating their patients: “They believed they could be signals from the soul about humoral imbalances in the body,” he wrote for History.com.^[]

Why you may want to talk with patients about dreams

Dreams are more common in REM sleep, with brain activity similar to the brain’s memory processing while awake, says the Cleveland Clinic.^[] And although dreams can be difficult to study, exploring themes and patterns, as well as lifestyle and other factors that impact sleep, may be helpful.

Health and lifestyle factors that may affect a patient’s dreams include PTSD and other psychological disorders, drug and alcohol use, stress, medication withdrawal, and sleep apnea.

A patient’s mental and emotional health is likely to play a role in their dreams. Nightmares, for example, are more likely for individuals experiencing stress. While the brain processes these emotions, dreams may be more frightening or stressful. This can manifest physically, too—an individual who has a dream about their teeth falling out is likely grinding their teeth during the night due to stress (aka bruxism).^[]

Do you believe dreams can hold clinical significance?

Investigating precognitive dreams and 'synchronicity'

Moving beyond the physical and into spiritual health, dreams can hold importance for self-awareness and discovery. Precognitive dreams, or dreams that seemingly predict the future, are particularly difficult to study because the details of the dream must be recorded in some way before the scenario is fulfilled in real life.

Whether or not a dream is truly precognitive, it can hold significance for a patient’s self-awareness.

“Dreams can offer insights into our subconscious mind, revealing hidden desires, fears, and emotions that we may not be aware of in our waking life,” writes psychiatrist Anna Yusim, MD, on her blog.^[] Exploring these themes with your patients can help them achieve personal growth and discovery.

The concept of dream synchronicity helps us explore the interconnectedness of dreams and the external world. If a patient has a recurring dream, it may be worthwhile to look for patterns and what they may reveal about the patient’s subconscious. “When we experience the same or similar dreams over and over again, it is a sign that there is a message or lesson that we need to pay attention to,” writes Dr. Yusim, with a solid takeaway for physicians to help guide their patients: “Pay attention to your dreams, keep a dream journal, and trust in the messages and symbols that come to you.”^[]

These sort of synchronicities are particularly meaningful for psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals.

“Therapy that is informed by synchronicity provides a wider and potentially less judgmental lens for understanding and conceptualizing what patients bring to therapy by, naturally, considering how synchronicities may be influencing our patients’ lives,” writes clinical psychologist Helen Marlo, PhD, in an article for Jung Journal.^[] “When practicing synchronicity-informed psychotherapy, therapists are advised to utilize their knowledge of the patient’s development, fantasies, transference, personality, therapeutic needs, and the symbolic meaning of the synchronistic event to guide interventions.”