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Sleepwalking
Category: Mind, Mood & Sleep · All mind & sleep symptoms
What it can feel like
Sleepwalking means getting up and performing activities — walking, talking, sometimes eating or attempting complex tasks — while still asleep, with little or no memory afterwards. It arises from deep slow-wave sleep in the first part of the night, when the brain is partly awake and partly asleep. It is common in children and usually outgrown; adult sleepwalking deserves a review of triggers.
Possible causes
A symptom can have many causes, and most are not serious. The lists below group conditions this symptom can be associated with — common causes first. They are possibilities to discuss with a clinician, not a diagnosis.
Common causes
Sleepwalking can be associated with sleep deprivation, fever (in children), stress, alcohol, and sedating medicines, and it runs in families — childhood sleepwalking often has a parent who did the same.
Other possible causes
Adult sleepwalking can also be associated with sleep apnoea triggering arousals from deep sleep, and must be distinguished from REM sleep behaviour disorder (acting out dreams, later in the night, remembered vividly — a different condition with neurological significance) and from nocturnal seizures.
Red flags — when to seek help promptly
- Sleepwalking with injury, leaving the house, or dangerous behaviour (cooking, driving attempts)
- New sleepwalking starting in later adult life
- Vivid dream-enactment with shouting and punching in the second half of the night (possible REM behaviour disorder)
- Episodes with stereotyped repetitive movements, tongue biting or incontinence (possible seizures)
- Sleepwalking with loud snoring and witnessed apnoeas
What a clinician may do
A clinician will take the episode history from a witness (timing in the night, behaviours, recall), review triggers and medicines, and assess snoring. Management starts with safety-proofing the environment, regular sleep, and trigger removal; sleep studies follow atypical or injurious patterns.
Related guides on MedicalVideos.com
Frequently asked questions
Should you wake a sleepwalker?
Gently guiding them back to bed is safer than a startling awakening, which can produce confusion and agitation — they are in deep sleep, not dreaming. The old warning that waking is dangerous is overstated; injury from the walking itself is the real risk to manage.
Why do children sleepwalk more?
Children spend far more of the night in deep slow-wave sleep — the state sleepwalking escapes from — and the brain's arousal systems are still maturing. Most outgrow it by adolescence as deep sleep thins out.
Related symptoms — Mind, Mood & Sleep
Browse the S section of the A–Z list or return to the Symptoms A–Z hub.