Getting away from the stress and anxiety of one's everyday situation is often cited as being integral to maintaining one's mental health. The standard advice is to face your fears and your problems, but most people would prefer to duck out of having to deal with the fear and anxiety. Contrary to popular belief, taking some time out of your life to indulge in a little escapism need not always be a negative. In some ways, letting your fantasies run wild in your head for a while can be a great form of stress relief. It may even help fight off some of the more common mental health disorders that people encounter.

Escapism, as already stated, is an excellent form of stress relief. Taking your mind off all the worries and problems imposed upon you by modern life is relatively easy. Different people indulge in this in different ways. Some people prefer to engage in role-playing games, giving them the chance to temporarily live out a life that's different from their own. Excellent examples of this would be games like ?Planescape: Torment? and ?Fallout 2,? which lets players play out scenarios in a fantasy world and a post-apocalyptic setting, respectively. Others prefer to sit back and go through a good book to let their minds wander off. People also ?escape? by reading different books with highly imaginative characters and storylines like Robert Jordan's ?Wheel of Time? and Terry Pratchett's ?Discworld.?

Escapism can also be used to help stir a little creativity in a person. A number of people have reported being able to look at a situation and think of possible solutions by being in a rested or comfortable position, rather than being stressed out over a problem. It is not unusual to hear anecdotes from people saying that they realized the perfect solution to a problem that has been causing them stress while reading a book or watching a hockey game. This is attributed to the theory that the human brain sometimes can only develop workable solutions and ideas to existing problems if the person is not actually focused on the problem at hand. While this theory may at first seem contradictory, most mental health and neurology experts say that somehow the human brain works that way.

However, escapism also has a dark side that people must watch out for. One of these problems is the use of escapism by a person who has already compromised his own mental health. It is generally ill-advised to help a person who is delusional or schizophrenic to engage in escapism, as this might reinforce their delusions and further loosen their grip on reality. Excessive escapism may also lead to someone experiencing social anxiety, as they begin to prefer the relative security and acceptance of fantasy over the chaos and conflict of reality. Some have also argued that escapism may lead to performance anxiety, as the person may find himself unable to handle a situation if it does not go exactly as it played out in his head.

Escapism has also been viewed negatively with relation to social interaction. Social anxiety aside, most people that engage in too much escapism are seen as being socially unstable. Certain forms of escapism, such as video games or ?Star Trek? have earned a mild degree of scorn among the general public, as well as some nicknames that are usually seen as derogatory.

Escapism, can be used for good or for bad. It is a means to have a better grip over one's life or it can be used exactly to escape one's reality.