Self-help books are a growing form of treatment for peoples physiological distress. There may be a possible connection between consumers of unguided self-help books and higher levels of stress and depressive symptoms. Researchers took many factors into consideration to find a difference in consumers and nonconsumers of self-help books. The study recruited 32 people between the ages of 18 and 65; 18 consumers and 14 nonconsumers, in both groups 75% of them were female. Then they broke the consumers into 11 who preferred problem-focused and 7 preferred growth-oriented. Those groups were tested for many things including cortisol levels, depressive symptomatology, and stress reactivity levels. There were no large differences between consumers of self-help books and nonconsumers when it comes to diurnal cortisol level, there was a large difference in depressive symptomatology with consumers having a higher mean score. The growth-oriented group has higher stress reactivity levels than the problem-focused group. However, the problem-focused group shows higher depressive symptomatology.