It's summertime and perhaps your thoughts have been drifting to your next vacation.

Maybe you're dreaming of sitting on a beach with a cool drink in hand or camping in the mountains,

or exploring a new city, or just staying home for a week reading and binge watching TV.

Whatever your idea of the perfect vacation, it's probably something that you look forward to all year.

Do vacations actually make people happier in the long run?

How do they affect our mental health and well-being?

What about our physical health?

And are some types of vacations more beneficial than others, and if so, which ones? Is it better to

relax, to scurry around seeing new sites and expanding our horizons, or some combination of

the two? Just how long do the benefits of vacation last? Is there anything you can do to make

that post-vacation glow last longer?

And finally, how do differences in work and vacation culture affect people's mental health and well-being around the world?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life.

I'm Kim Mills.

We have two guests today.

First is Dr. Sarah Pressman, a professor of psychological science and an associate dean at the University of California, Irvine.

Her research focuses on the interplay between stress and psychological well-being and health.

She has examined the role that positive emotions and behaviors play in influencing stress and health outcomes,

and she's especially interested in understanding exactly how these positive factors get under the skin to influence our well-being.

As part of that research, she's studied how vacations and leisure time affect people's stress levels and their physical health.

Our second guest is Dr. Jessica de Blum, a work in organizational psychologist and a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

She studies the effects of vacation and leisure time on people's well-being and work performance,

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