{"id":1172,"date":"2011-02-21T11:47:22","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T10:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2011-03-05T12:33:21","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T11:33:21","slug":"casual-games-as-treatment-for-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2011\/02\/21\/casual-games-as-treatment-for-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"Casual Games as Treatment for Depression (?)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Popcap-sponsored study of using casual games as treatment for depression has been making the rounds the last few days. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/33064\/Study_Finds_Casual_Games_Reduce_Depression_Anxiety_Symptoms.php\">Here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/blogs\/techchron\/detail?entry_id=26054\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/communities\/gamehunters\/post\/2011\/02\/casual-video-games-can-reduce-depression-research-suggests\/1\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/cvg_depression_study2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1178\" title=\"cvg_depression_study\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/cvg_depression_study2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"193\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The table shows changes over time (pre study &#8211; post study): test subjects who were told to play a casual video game at regular intervals (bottom data) showed much greater improvement than a control group who were not asked to make any changes (top data).<\/p>\n<p>As usual, I should say that I am not trained in psychology, but the study would be a lot stronger if there was a second control group who was subject to another type of intervention &#8211; therapy, drugs, any kind of behavioral change. As far as I know, certain psychological states are not only likely to change over time (as happens with the control group who does get better), but are also influenced by <em>any<\/em> type of intervention or change in behavior. The two underlying questions that I would like to see answered:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Does <em>Bejeweled <\/em>work better than cooking classes or reading?<\/li>\n<li>Do different games work differently? My feeling is that asking novice users to play <em>StarCraft II<\/em> would <em>increase<\/em> depression.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>(The study isn&#8217;t published yet, but the slides can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ecu.edu\/cs-hhp\/rcls\/biofeedback\/upload\/Updated_Efficacy-of-CVGs-and-depression-study0200811.pptx\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Popcap-sponsored study of using casual games as treatment for depression has been making the rounds the last few days. (Here, here, here.) The table shows changes over time (pre study &#8211; post study): test subjects who were told to play a casual video game at regular intervals (bottom data) showed much greater improvement than &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2011\/02\/21\/casual-games-as-treatment-for-depression\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Casual Games as Treatment for Depression (?)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}