Sleepwalking is more common than most people realize. A large meta-analysis published in PLOS ONE estimated the lifetime prevalence at 6.9%, meaning roughly 1 in 14 people will sleepwalk at least once in their lives. It’s far more frequent in children than adults, and most people who sleepwalk as kids eventually stop on their own.
How Many People Sleepwalk
That 6.9% lifetime figure captures anyone who has ever had an episode, including one-off occurrences. The rate of current, ongoing sleepwalking at any given point is lower because many people experience it only during childhood and never again. Children between the ages of roughly 4 and 12 are the most likely group to sleepwalk, and episodes tend to decrease around puberty. However, at least 25% of children with chronic sleepwalking continue to have episodes into adulthood.
Adults who sleepwalk regularly are a smaller group, but they exist. Some develop sleepwalking for the first time as adults, often triggered by stress, sleep deprivation, or medication. Because episodes happen during sleep and the person rarely remembers them, many adults may sleepwalk without ever knowing it, particularly if they live alone.
Why It Happens
Sleepwalking occurs during the deepest stage of non-REM sleep, the phase your body enters in the first few hours of the night. This is why episodes almost always happen in the first third of the sleep period rather than close to morning. During an episode, parts of the brain responsible for movement wake up while the areas governing awareness and decision-making stay asleep. Brain imaging studies show reduced blood flow to the frontal and parietal regions during sleepwalking. These are the areas that handle planning, self-awareness, and spatial reasoning, which explains why sleepwalkers can navigate a room but can’t respond meaningfully to someone trying to talk to them.
This split state, where the body is active but higher-level thinking is offline, is why sleepwalkers typically have no memory of what happened. If they do recall anything, it’s usually a single fragmented image rather than a coherent narrative.
Genetics Play a Major Role
Sleepwalking runs strongly in families. First-degree relatives of sleepwalkers (parents, siblings, children) have at least a 10-fold increased likelihood of sleepwalking compared to the general population. If one of your parents sleepwalked, your chances are significantly higher than average. If both did, the risk climbs further. This genetic component helps explain why sleepwalking clusters in certain families across generations, and it’s one reason childhood sleepwalking is so common: kids inherit the predisposition, then outgrow it as their sleep architecture matures.
Common Triggers
Even people with a genetic predisposition don’t sleepwalk every night. Specific triggers push the brain toward those partial arousals from deep sleep. The most well-established ones include:
- Sleep deprivation. Going without adequate sleep increases the intensity of deep sleep when you finally do rest, making incomplete arousals more likely.
- Stress and anxiety. Both fragment sleep and increase the number of brief arousals during the night.
- Fever or illness. Particularly in children, a high temperature can destabilize sleep enough to trigger an episode.
- Alcohol. Drinking before bed alters sleep architecture in ways that promote deep-sleep disruptions.
- Medications. A systematic review identified 29 drugs across four main categories that can trigger sleepwalking: sleep aids that enhance the brain’s main calming chemical (GABA), antidepressants that boost serotonin activity, antipsychotics, and certain blood pressure medications called beta-blockers. The strongest evidence pointed to zolpidem, a widely prescribed sleep medication.
What Episodes Look and Feel Like
Sleepwalking ranges from sitting up in bed and looking around to walking through the house, opening doors, or even leaving the building. The person’s eyes are usually open but glazed. They may mumble or give short responses, but they won’t engage in real conversation. If you try to redirect or wake them, they’ll typically seem confused and unresponsive. After the episode ends, they may remain disoriented for several minutes before either waking fully or settling back into normal sleep.
Most people remember nothing in the morning. Some feel vaguely unrested or notice they’re in a different location than where they fell asleep, but the episode itself is a blank.
Injury Risk During Episodes
The biggest concern with sleepwalking isn’t the walking itself but what can go wrong while a person navigates the world without conscious awareness. In a clinical study of parasomnia patients, 25% of sleepwalkers had been injured by breaking objects during an episode, and 6.3% experienced a shoulder dislocation. Falls down stairs, walking into furniture, and leaving the house into traffic or cold weather are all documented risks. The danger scales with the complexity of the behavior: someone who sits up in bed and lies back down faces minimal risk, while someone who opens doors and walks outside faces considerably more.
For frequent sleepwalkers, practical safety steps make a real difference. Sleeping on the ground floor, locking windows and exterior doors with keys kept out of easy reach, clearing the bedroom floor of obstacles, and placing gates at the top of stairs all reduce injury risk during episodes.
When Sleepwalking Persists Into Adulthood
Most childhood sleepwalking resolves naturally around puberty as the brain’s sleep regulation systems mature. For the roughly 25% whose episodes continue, or for adults who develop sleepwalking later in life, the pattern tends to be more persistent and may require active management. Addressing the triggers listed above, particularly sleep deprivation, alcohol, and medication side effects, often reduces episode frequency without any other intervention.
For people whose episodes are frequent, dangerous, or severely disruptive, a sleep specialist can help identify whether an underlying sleep disorder like obstructive sleep apnea is fragmenting sleep and provoking arousals. Treating the underlying condition sometimes eliminates the sleepwalking entirely. In cases where no clear trigger is found, scheduled awakenings (briefly waking the person about 15 to 30 minutes before episodes typically occur) can interrupt the cycle of deep-sleep arousals that leads to sleepwalking.