Rest is something that is frequently recommended in medical consultations, but there is still no clear and agreed scientific definition that helps to investigate it. Esther I.
Bernhofer, an associate professor at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, reviewed the scientific literature to see how rest was defined. “If you're going to prescribe rest, you have to be able to define it,” she says. Rest is not the same for an athlete as it is for a sedentary person, says Pablo Baz, coordinator of the Neurology Working Group of the Spanish Society of Primary Care Physicians. For someone with depression, rest would be behavioral activation, says Aurora Gómez, psychologist at Corio Psicología, which involves “getting a lot of positive stimuli, things that you like and that fit with your values.” In a small study in Sweden in 2015, 63 people were asked about their sleep experiences. What does rest mean to you? How do you rest? Tell me about your experience with rest.