RESUMEN
Several research articles have focused on the relationship between nightmares and psychopathology, however a growing number of studies emphasize that nightmare distress may be a better candidate for the prediction of the disturbed mental state, than nightmare frequency itself. At present, validated Hungarian scales measuring nightmare distress are still lacking, therefore are aim was to fill this gap by the psychometric analysis of the Van Dream Anxiety Scale (VDAS), using the data of 140 individuals (70 patients diagnosed with adaptation disorder, and 70 matched controls). The internal consistency of the Scale proved to be considerably good, with the Cronbach-alpha being 0.846 in the control and 0.958 in the clinical group. According to our results the Scale containing 17 items can be reduced to 4 items without loosing relevant information. The patient group reached significantly higher scores on the VDAS than the control one. This could reliably differentiate the two groups. We analyzed the validity of the Scale by correlation analysis with the Dream Recall Scale, the Dream Quality Questionnaire, the Hopelessness Questionnaire, and the Beck Anxiety Questionnaire. Scores of the VDAS showed the predicted correlations with the questionnaires measuring the psychopathological state, and with specific items of the Dream Quality Questionnaire (nightmare frequency and dysphoric dreaming). We consider, that the VDAS is an easily an effectively applicable scale in the fields of clinical and experimental dream research.