Go home and rest” is still the advice given to many patients who complain of chronic fatigue. The refrain is echoed in self help books and magazines and adopted by many patients. What are the origins of rest as a treatment, does it work, and what evidence is there on which to base our advice to patients?
Victorian physicians diagnosed them as neurasthenia and routinely prescribed rest. This approach was typified by Silas Weir Mitchell’s “rest cure,” which was so popular as to be described as “the greatest advance of which practical medicine can boast in the last quarter of the century.” Despite such accolades, the popularity of the rest cure was short lived. By the turn of the century the same private clinics that once provided it were changing to more active treatments and to the newer psychotherapies. The years that followed saw the end of the rest cure; Karl Menninger poured scorn on the lack of psychological sophistication shown by its proponents, while Richard Asher drew attention to the “the dangers of going to bed.”
You can read the rest of this article here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1112768/
Comment in:
Treating chronic fatigue with exercise. Exercise improves mood and sleep. [BMJ. 1998]
Treating chronic fatigue with exercise. Exercise, and rest, should be tailored to individual needs. [BMJ. 1998]
Treating chronic fatigue with exercise. Results are contradictory for patients meeting different diagnostic criteria. [BMJ. 1998]
Source: Sharpe M, Wessely S. Putting the rest cure to rest—again. BMJ. 1998 Mar 14;316(7134):796. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1112768/ (Full article)