In all honesty, I think writing, and the inherent escapism of living for a time in another world of one's own creation, is probably one of the healthiest and sanest responses to stress that there is.
It's often easier to face hard issues in the settings we create and control, and I'm frequently surprised when I see a solution to a real life problem after I've been writing about something quite different. The skills I use as a writer to resolve conflict in my stories and among my characters seem to trigger a sort of thinking outside the box effect in my real life, if that makes any sense.