Period of resting is beneficial for mental recovery after suffering from a traumatic event, study states

Mental health is one topic that is still taboo in our society. Because of such hindrances, there is yet a lot to be explored about how one can appropriately deal with mental issues like post-traumatic stress disorder. According to a new study, a period of rest after suffering from a traumatic event can prove to be beneficial to the person by boosting their mental health. The study claims that resting can help people recover from negative memories.

Owing to this study, researchers might be able to come up with better ways to help tackle post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study also revealed that while some people are fine following exposure to certain trauma, others develop memory disturbances. For the study, the researchers presented 85 participants with emotionally negative videos. Post this, the participants were either given a period of wakeful rest or they were asked to do a simple control task in which they had to pay attention to some numbers on a screen.

The videos featured emotional content like accidents and injured people. While there was no difference in how much the participants remembered when it came to assessing their tests, the researchers did notice that the participants who were allowed to rest reported fewer memory intrusions as compared to the participants who got no rest after viewing the videos. The researchers explained that when people get enough rest and sleep, it helps improve the functioning of the hippocampus in the brain which is responsible for memory functioning and retaining.

So, this way, people faced fewer unwanted memory intrusions following trauma. "The coherence of memories is often compromised when people are exposed to psychological trauma, resulting in emotional memories popping up involuntarily and out of context," says an expert. "Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms that are at play when some people develop memory disturbances following trauma while others do not," said co-author of the study Lone Horlyck.