SENDING YOUR TEENAGERS AWAY - CONTROLLED STRESS DECREASES NEUROTIC VULNERABILITY

Objectives To study the effect of a controlled stressor on the rate of personality maturity. Design: Eighteen-month prospective controlled s tudy. Setting: General community. Intervention: Experimental: Exposed to the stress of 12 months' intercultural experience. Control: Remaine d in usual environment. Main Outcome Measure: A measure of personality vulnerability/maturity derived from a canonical correlational combina tion of trait anxiety, locus of control, and defense style. Results: E xchange students exposed to the stressor made significantly greater ga ins in personality maturity (0.28 vs 0.03 SD: P less-than-or-equal-to .01) than did the control students matched on this measure at baseline . Conclusion: Exchange students exposed to the stress of living abroad showed a substantial decrease in vulnerability, which should decrease the risk of future neurotic disorders in this group