A growing number of people claim to suffer from “Sexsomnia”, a type of sleeping disorder where sufferers have sex while they sleep, a new study has claimed.
Canadian researchers found almost one in 12 people had had admitted engaging or initiating some sort of sexual activity while they slept.
Men accounted for three-quarters of the self-reported "sexsomniacs", they found. Experts say such sexual behaviour that occurred while sleeping can range from masturbation through to physical intercourse. In their study, presented at a recent sleep conference, researchers from the Sleep Research Laboratory at the University Health Network in Toronto, found the disorder was more common than previously thought.
In the study, which has not been published, researchers interviewed 832 patients who they suspected of suffering from some sort of sleep disorder.
The 428 men and 404 women, who had also been referred to the clinic, also completed questionnaires about their symptoms, fatigue, mood and behaviour during sleep.
The study, presented last week at the annual Associated Professional Sleep Societies conference, in San Antonio, Texas, found that more than one in 10 male and four per cent of female interviewees admitted they had engaged in "sleep sex”.
Dr Sharon Chung, a scientist from the UHN, said people who suffered from it generally had no recollection of engaging in such activity.
"We were surprised at how common it was. We thought we'd get just a handful of people, yet it was almost one in 12 (people),” said Dr Chung, who led the study.
"There have been no previous studies of how frequently sexsomnia occurs.”
"While our finding of eight per cent of people reporting sexsomnia seems really a high number, it should be stressed that we only studied patients referred to a sleep clinic.”
She added: "Is it a problem? As long as you don't get into legal problems and as long as your partner doesn't mind, it's not a problem. "Although it can leave you tired the next day." She said the phenomenon was a form of parasomnia, or unwanted behaviour during sleep. It can also occur during sleepwalking, according to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders.
Dr Chung said insomnia, fatigue and depressed moods were common symptoms of people reporting sexsomnia. "An act of parasomnia can be as small as opening your eyes while fast asleep or grinding your teeth, to getting up and vacuuming, speaking, eating or having sex," Dr Chung said. It is thought that people are who suffer from it are generally found to be in a state of semi-arousal and are generally not conscious of it. Dr Chung found that many patients failed to consult their doctor about the condition partly due to embarrassment, their physician rarely asking about it or even that some weren’t even bothered by it.
In Britain, the disorder has been used in some court cases as a defence of a defendant’s actions.
CASES
-Natalie Pona, the then Sun reporter, broke the first press story of sexsomnia in the fall of 2005. On 30 November 2005, a Toronto court acquitted a man of sexual assault after he was diagnosed with sleep sex disorder, although prosecutors filed an appeal of the acquittal in February 2006. The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the acquittal on 7 February 2008.
- In Britain, a man from York was cleared of three counts of rape on 19 December 2005.
- In Australia, a woman was reported as leaving her house at night and having sex with strangers while sleepwalking.
On 8 August 2007, a British RAF mechanic was cleared of a rape charge after the jury found him not responsible for his actions when he had sex with a 15-year-old girl.
- On 23 March 2009, a British woman gave an interview in which she spoke about problems in her life caused by sexsomnia.
- On 12 February 2010, an Australian man was found not guilty of rape due to sexsomnia. This similarly happened to a Welsh man on 4 July 2011
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