Too Sick for a Vacation [balance]

Too Sick for a Vacation

Driven Personalities Can Have a Hard Time Relaxing Even During a Break

Dec. 4, 2002 -- Vacations and leisure time usually provide welcome relief from the stresses of everyday life, but for some people free time may make them sick. For the first time, a new study shows "leisure sickness" may be a real issue for a significant number of adults.

Until now, Dutch researchers say only occasional references have been made to the phenomenon of leisure sickness, which they say can best be described as frequently feeling ill during weekends and/or vacations. To get a first look at the nature of the condition how common it is, they surveyed about 2,000 men and women about whether they fit that description of weekend and vacation sickness.

Their report appears in the current issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

They found 3.2% of both men and women identified themselves as suffering from vacation illness, but more men than women (3.6% vs. 2.7%) said they suffered from weekend illness.

The most commonly reported symptoms of leisure illness included headache/migraine, fatigue, muscular pains, and nausea. Viral infections, such as cold or flu, were also frequently reported in relation to vacations.

Most people with the condition had suffered from it for more than 10 years, and the onset of the illness was often stress-related. Sufferers attributed their illness to difficulty making the transition from work to leisure as well as the stress associated with travel and vacations

Although researchers found few lifestyle differences between those with leisure sickness and those without, the study suggests people with a large workload, high need for achievement, and a strong sense of responsibility with respect to work may be especially vulnerable to the problem.

Study author J.J.M. Vingerhoets, of the department of clinical health psychology at Tilburg University in The Netherlands, and colleagues write that future studies should look at the causes of this mysterious condition and investigate potential treatments.

SOURCE: Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 71, 2002.

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