This pillow is designed just for screaming into but does it really relieve stress?

When’s the last time you yelled at the top of your lungs?Letting out a scream can be cathartic — and according to proponents, it can also relieve stress, relax muscle tension and increase your energy.But unless you live in the middle of nowhere, there’s not a lot of opportunity to truly let loose without looking insane, worrying your neighbors, and potentially putting your job in jeopardy.That’s why Powershout invented The Shoutlet, a “portable voice suppression device” — that is, a small pillow made from high-density memory foam — to give everyone an outlet for their most unhinged urges to scream.According to the brand, The Shoutlet is like a stress ball — but you yell into it instead of squeezing it.The idea is that screaming has a lot of benefits for stress relief, and lower stress also means better overall health.The company says shouting is an “instant mood lifter,” triggering the release of endorphins, reducing feelings like irritability and hopelessness, and relaxing clenched muscles.The science on it is light, but “scream therapy” — also called primal scream therapy — is, in fact, a thing.

It was unvented in the ’70s by psychotherapist Dr.Arthur Janov, who argued that it could help with repressed childhood trauma.

(He also treated John Lennon and Yoko Ono.)More recently, “rage rooms” have popped up to give people a chance to get out their feelings, including through screaming.“The idea of catharsis is very popular, and rage rooms are linked to the idea of ‘letting off steam,’” Dr.Sarita Robinson, deputy head of psychology and computer science at the UK’s University of Central Lancashire, told The Independent.

“We intuitively feel that releasing our rage should help us to achieve a sense of balance and allow us to regulate our emotions.”But, she noted, the research on it is mixed.“In some cases, acting aggressively in order to release negative emotions can actually makes us feel worse.In fact, by using a...