Some people did a study of practitioners and participants of bdsm. According to a line in the study, participation reduced stress and "negative affect," meaning a bad mood, depression, etc.

There was an article published with the study results back in November 2016 in the "daily mail," of the uk.

The study results say that bdsm tends to result also in altered states of consciousness associated with creativity. I see that a few months ago roy munson started a thread on bd sessions and creativity but whether or not we discussed these study results, I do not know. Perhaps we did and I simply missed it.

It is easy to miss the study results re stress and bad mood, since the headlines of the study results are about bdsm helping people be more creative . . .

About 1 in six Americans takes psychiatric drugs of various types, with the majority being anti-depressants . . . I don't know of people taking legal drugs to be more creative . . .

Of course, other psychologically oriented studies find that you can get far better results in "treating" depression by 5 to 10 lifestyle changes than by taking drugs . . . though the main ones have not included getting spanked or caned or whipped as one of the lifestyle changes one might adopt for "depression."

If the headline was that bdsm reduces stress, anxiety and depression and bad mood, you would wonder if that meant that there was a therapeutic meaning and use to getting caned. Maybe that implication is bad and so the headline writer choose to write about creativity.