The Burrow
Apr 15, 2025
Can you remember the first nightmare you ever had? Nightmares and bad dreams are a fascinating part of the human subconscious, reflecting a troubled, stressed mind – or perhaps too much cheese pizza before bed.
Do some countries have more nightmares than others? What are the most common nightmares in different parts of the world? As health insurance comparison experts, we understand how a health policy can support people struggling with nightmares. We turned to search engine data to see what the most common nightmares are in Google queries.
To do this, we gathered monthly average search rate volume for different nightmares from 15 nations across the world.
Here’s what we found.
When crunching the data for the most common nightmares, there was a surprising discovery. Every single one of the 15 nations we analysed had the same top searched nightmare: the ‘teeth falling out’ nightmare.
All the other nightmares had the same search rate per capita in every other country, except in the USA. In America, there were some search terms with a higher search rate per capita than others, creating an order from most searched to least:
All countries had quite low search rates for the other nightmare types except for bad dreams involving falling teeth. The table below just focuses the search rates for the term “teeth falling out nightmare”.
Interestingly, while it was the most searched kind of nightmare in each country, it was a lot more common in some countries than others.
Australia had the highest search rate for teeth falling out nightmares at 30.382 per 100,000. America followed suit at 26.609 per capita, and New Zealand was third with a rate of 24.889 per 100,000.
| Country | Search rate (per capita) |
|---|---|
| 🇦🇺 Australia | 30.382 |
| 🇺🇸 USA | 26.609 |
| 🇳🇿 New Zealand | 24.889 |
| 🇨🇦 Canada | 20.199 |
| 🇿🇦 South Africa | 4.587 |
| 🇳🇴 Norway | 3.079 |
| 🇬🇷 Greece | 2.017 |
| 🇨🇭 Switzerland | 1.912 |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | 0.864 |
| 🇪🇸 Spain | 0.806 |
| 🇫🇷 France | 0.468 |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | 0.440 |
| 🇨🇱 Chile | 0.152 |
| 🇹🇷 Türkiye | 0.128 |
| 🇦🇷 Argentina | 0.087 |
We also looked at broader terms to see which countries had the highest rates of people Googling their nightmares. For the term “nightmare” itself, it was most common in Italy, with a search rate of 37.633 per capita. Australia was second with a search rate of 16.504, followed by Canada at 16.458.
The term “bad dream” had the highest per capita search rate in Australia, with a rate of 3.750, followed closely by Greece at 3.746 and Germany at 2.881.
It was interesting to see how regular teeth falling out nightmares were across the world, suggesting it’s a common part of the human condition. The Sleep Foundation states that 39% of people have this type of bad dream, and 16% have it regularly.1 There is no definitive reason why people have this nightmare, but most theories link it to stress and health related fears.
The Harvard Medical School notes that nightmares can occur in adults but are more common in children, and are typically caused by stress, poor sleep, anxiety and mental health disorders, some medications, and post-traumatic stress disorder.2
Many people might have the occasional nightmare, but sometimes nightmares can be a regular problem impacting day-to-day life. These can be referred to as nightmare disorders.3 There is treatment available for regular problem nightmares – but will health insurance cover it?
Compare the Market’s Executive General Manager of Health, Steven Spicer, explains that health insurance may be able to offer some services that could benefit someone experiencing nightmares.
“Extras cover for psychology, for example, can pay a benefit towards treatment and therapy for problematic nightmares,” Mr Spicer said.
“If the nightmares are causing serious mental stress, they can impact someone’s life, and it may be necessary to seek treatment. Depending on the coverage of your policy, this is something that you can claim on to help reduce the cost of treatment from a professional.”
Considering that nightmares about falling teeth were the number one nightmare across the world, Spicer adds that health insurance can help pay for dental care.
“Health insurance extras can help Australians take charge of their dental health by covering some of the cost of dental appointments and treatment.”
Spicer noted it was concerning how high Australia’s online search rate was for the three key terms “nightmare”, “bad dream” and “teeth falling out nightmare”.
“Australia having such high per capita search rates for different nightmare terms is surprising – and a worry. This suggests that there are a lot of Australians who could be experiencing a great deal of stress, leading them to seek answers online.
“Anyone feeling impacted by nightmares may also choose to reach out to their GP to discuss treatment options – and hopefully get some good nights’ sleep.”
On 06/03/2025 keyword search volume for relevant keywords was gathered using the Ahrefs keyword tool. These terms were searched in English due to inconsistencies when translating into different languages and lower search volume for other primary languages in non-English speaking countries for the same terms.
The average monthly search volume for each phrase was then converted into a per capita search rate (per 100,000 people) based on each nation’s population using the World Bank’s World Development Indicators data.
The phrases were:
References: