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Study concludes that some video games can aid in battling mental health like depression and anxiety
A new report from Johns Hopkins Childrens Center has concluded that some video games can combat mental health issues like anxiety and depression if employed sparingly.
Thanks to changing attitudes and further research, we are slowly edging toward a world that is more accepting of mental health and all its complexities. Just recently, Clinical psychologist Dr Rene� Carr shared advice for dealing with election anxiety.
Are video games good for your mental health? Sort of
Though we constantly hear of how certain foods can aid in our battle against depression, the same could not be said of technology which is usually blamed for mental health woes. But as it turns out, technology’s overwhelming evil might not be as accurate as some lead us to believe.
In a new report from Johns Hopkins Childrens Center, researchers dug through masses of peer-reviewed journals from 2011 to 2024. Their findings were published in the JAMA Pediatrics journal.
It’s estimated that 20% of teenagers in the US are currently battling mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral disorders. Suicide rates have also increased by 40% in the decade prior to 2019.
We found literature that suggests that even doubling the number of pediatric mental health providers still wouldnt meet the need, said Barry Bryant, a resident in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Understanding that sheer man power could not efficiently address the issue, Barry Bryant and his team looked into gamified digital mental health interventions, which is just a fancy way of saying video games designed for mental health purposes.
They identified 27 clinical trials of that nature, most of which designed games specifically to target ADHD, depression and anxiety. For games designed with ADHD in mind, gamers were provided with activities that divided their attention, while depression-specific digital treatments involved psychotherapy-oriented concepts in a game format.
Unfortunately, games for anxiety were not as successful
Through the analysis of the available studies, the researchers found that games for depression and ADHD were ranked higher than those for anxiety.
While the benefits are still modest, our research shows that we have some novel tools to help improve childrens mental health particularly for ADHD and depression that can be relatively accessible to families, said Joseph McGuire, Ph.D., author of the study and an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences in the school of medicine. So if you are a pediatrician and youre having trouble getting your pediatric patient into individual mental health care, there could be some gamified mental health interventions that could be nice first steps for children while waiting to start individual therapy.
There were some drawbacks of the study including partipants being largely male and the fact it didn’t take it account foreign case studies. Nonetheless, it does pose interesting questions about video games for health.
