Study: Videogame Addiction Leads to Depression

[ckam]

Perhaps they were playing terrible games is the reason why they're depressed.

Sometimes, I get depressed when I read books like Twilight or 101 Wacky Computer Jokes. But that's just my two cents.

On another note, Singapore is kind of different, culturally, than America or any other western country for that matter.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Back during my depression, I got told it was a chemical imbalance. I called bullshit, got put on medication.
Fast forward 8 months (after 3 years of depression that nearly finished me off) and I beat it without my medication or the help of any other chemicals, but by sitting under a tree on a hill and being content to live in the moment.

Chemical imbalance my ass. What a horrible thing to tell someone.

Our brains run on chemicals. Every emotion we feel is the result of chemical and electrical activity in our brain.

Feel happy dancing to your favorite song? Serotonin.

Feel awesome after having sex or a fast jog? Endorphins.

Feel tired and low after missing sleep or stressing out? Lack of Serotonin.

When you feel low and depressed it is because the chemicals in your brain are not balanced right, for whatever reason.

Is medication the answer? No. Only in very extreme cases. [EDIT: In fact, I've seen friends get far worse on meds]

Sitting under the tree and relaxing obviously increased certain chemicals in your brain, making you feel better and restoring the balance in your brain.

{EDIT: And yes, I'm sure there were many other factors too, don't take that as literal - I'm not arrogant enough to assume I know anything about your particular experience)

 

[Sgt Doom]

But what wasn't clear was what comes before what. Gaming might be a secondary problem. It might be that kids who are socially awkward, who aren't doing well in school, get depressed and then lose themselves into games.

/thread

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Simply put, depression is a made up disease to make people feel special or important because their failure is a result of "condition" when in reality, they just suck at life, the universe and everything. At least currently. The way to cure that? Stop sucking! Fix your goddamn problems. And suddenly you don't have depression after your problems are fixed. Hmmmmm, suspicious isn't it?

Read post 75.

I'm not advocating meds at all.

I'm saying that real depression is a chemical imbalance but (usually) can be cured in a number of ways. In otherwords, we're in agreement apart for the semantics.

 

[TheXRatedDodo]

I seem to be the only person on this forum who doesn't place all of his faith in Science.

Yeah, SCIENTIFICALLY, it may be a chemical imbalance, but we are human beings, we are MORE than a series of chemical reactions, we are more than the sum of our parts. Regurgitate scientific facts all you like, but that isn't going to help someone get over a depression.


Edit: Just re-read that, and I realised this post my have come off as being slightly agressive in tone, apolagies if it was taken as such because it was not meant to read that way.

 

[_Janny_]

I so love this quote. I should print it out and stick it on a wall.

Games make me happy and that's pretty much all I care about. I tend not to take these studies too seriously because it's hard to make a proper study of the game addiction simply because there are too many variables involved and everyone's mental state is different.

 

[DarkSpectre]

I would simple conclude that since games are rather sedentary large amount of time spent on them will cause a drop in physical activity which is counter to depression. So yes playing too much video games could make you more depressed, so would watching too much tv, so would reading too many books or really doing anything that doesn't require a lot of movement. Everything in moderation. That is why it is called too much of something. Play games for a few hours and then go do forty push ups and I'll bet the increase in depression will go away. Gaming is not the problem lack of exercise is. I am pretty sure gaming has an answer to this already. Sony even called theirs the Move.

 

[jack583]

you have a problem you can't solve
it bothers you to the point of depression
you find something enjoyable to prolong the depression until the problem can be solved.
but it does not cure and if you can't solve the problem you will begin to fear what caused the problem.
you will go with your escape method in order to hide from the problem.
now you have an addiction.

it's the same cause for every addiction
but the escape can be differnt:
foods
drinks
drugs
social activities
money
sports
tv shows
and games

many escapes/distractions, but they do not cause depression.
they are the clueless passer-bys that got to close to a crime scene at the time of the crime and was mistaken as the criminal.

 

[TheAceTheOne]

Videogame addiction? Crap. Everyone, band together... we need VGA. Uh... That's "Video Gamer's Anonymous" in case that wasn't clear.

But seriously, my family's been trying to convince me I'm addicted. Just like they're addicted to TV, junk food, Bejewled (hypocrites), and other assorted things. Everyone's addicted to something. Everyone has a vice, whether it's cigarettes, gambling, street racing, adrenaline rushes, video games, TV... I could fill a thread myself by listing examples, I'm sure.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Since there isn't any other way, I guess I will argue with personal experience. I could be called "Addicted to gaming", have not much of a social life and I am happier than most I have met. It's all a choice. If you choose to be happy, you will be.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

anxiety and depression?
only when i play Call of Duty games *BOOSH!*

 

[badgersprite]

Well, yeah, being addicted to games to the point where you're not sleeping, you're gaining weight, you're failing school work and you feel like you have no life does tend to make people pretty depressed. If that's not happening, then you're not addicted, but, yeah, teenagers do tend to not be very good at moderation; I can see that looking back at my own life and my own experience with gaming addiction.

 

[Darth IB]

I can kind of see how that would make sense, at least for me.
The more addicted I become to a game, the more isolated I become from the outside world. The more isolated I become, the more depressed I become.
Fortunately I have awesome friends nowadays who pull me out of my games before I get properly depressed.

 

[The Lost Big Boss]

I find that social isolation leads to depression, and games are just a tool to use for people who lead isolated lives.

 

[TheXRatedDodo]

I saw a post earlier detailing how the person in question felt their schoolwork and such suffered after coming out of their previous 'Dreamworld' (love the terminology there, by the way @ that poster, it is one of my favourite terms along with 'Otherworld.')

Gaming is not personally my main "hobby" if you will. My life is mainly commited to exploring my consciousness, my existence, my spirituality, etcetera. What that poster is describing is very much akin to the periods of lowness and lethargy I experience after coming "down" from a period spent in the otherworlds.
Why? What the majority call "reality" really has a tendency to be awfully dull. Wake up, go to work/school, come home, do homework/paperwork, begrudgingly fuck your trophy wife, sleep. Rinse, repeat.
We Humans are very explorative, inquisitive creatures. This cycle of the daily grind causes this lethargy and boredom because what we all fundamentally want to be doing is exploring states of altered consciousness, be it through drugs, music, gaming, reading, drama, dancing, whatever it may be. These are not vices or escapes, to my perception, but rather it is waking up from the sleep that is the daily grind.

We yearn for catharsis, and catharsis is rarely found in what we call "reality."
I'm sure many of us here have seen Inception, right?
The scene where Ariadne leaves after her first foray into constructing the dreamworlds and Cobb states "she'll be back" and explains that "reality" will never be enough for her is what I'm getting at.
Dreamworlds and Otherworlds and altered states of consciousness allow us to learn, work, play, explore, create and percieve and find real, genuine Catharsis. If people are becoming depressed because "reality" forces them to leave it behind, I am not at all surprised.

And here is exactly why I left College twice, have no job and no intention of getting one. THe more time I spend commited to exploring these Dreamworlds, be they through games, music, drugs, dance, cups of goddamn tea or anything else, the more alive I feel, the more real everything feels, and the more cathartic, jubilant and joyful my existence becomes.

For a race of creatures that are always talking about "staying grounded," it strikes me as hilariously ironic that this sort of catharsis comes from states that are so "up in the clouds" and "away with the faeries."
I am frequently told I need to keep my feet on the ground. I frequently ignore it and I am all the happier for it.

I am not sure what this post is supposed to achieve, but maybe someone will connect with these words.

 

[Xannieros]

I don't believe it causes depression. People who already HAVE depression use it to avoid real life issues.

 

[bbad89]

It's other people being douches because you play videogames. This study has proven that people are douchebags. AKA welcome to real life

 

[Slythernite]

I agree with this. I stopped playing video games for two weeks, and felt much better. Doing other things just feels better.
I'm still going to play 6+ hours a day though.

 

[Phyroxis]

Study: Videogame Addiction Leads to Depression

It's not the chicken and the egg after all: study shows that playing games "pathologically" leads to feeling bad and not the other way around.

A study conducted by Iowa State University psychologist Douglas A. Gentile suggests that kids that are addicted to games, called "pathological" by the study, are more prone to disorders such as depression. A sample of 3,034 kids aged 8 to 13 from the island nation of Singapore were asked survey questions every year from 2007 to 2009. Gentile's team surmised a link between game-playing and depression and his paper establishing that progression will appear in an upcoming issue of the psych journal Pediatrics.

"What we've known from other studies is that videogaming addiction looks similar to other addictions. But what wasn't clear was what comes before what. Gaming might be a secondary problem. It might be that kids who are socially awkward, who aren't doing well in school, get depressed and then lose themselves into games. We haven't really known if gaming is important by itself, or what puts kids at risk for becoming addicted," said Gentile.

Unfortunately for us gamers, the results of the study point to pathological gaming as increasing the chances of psychological disorders. "We found that in kids who started gaming pathologically, depression and anxiety got worse. And, when they stopped gaming, the depression lifted. It may be that these disorders [co-exist], but games seem to make the problem worse."

The important distinction of this study is that "the gaming precedes the depression. We don't know if it's truly causal, but gaming has an effect on its own, and you can't just ignore gaming and treat depression," he said.

Thankfully, Gentile was quick to point out that playing a lot of games doesn't necessarily equate to depression, but that other indicators might point to a problem. "A lot of videogaming isn't the same as an addiction. Some kids can play a lot without having an effect on their lives. It's when you see other areas of your child's life suffer that it may be addiction. Parents might notice that a child doesn't have the same friends any more, or that he's just sitting in his room playing video games all the time. Or, there might be a drop in school performance," he said.

What do you guys think? Have you noticed increased feelings of depression or anxiety when you play a lot of games? Could these be linked?

Source: U.S. News [http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2011/01/17/video-game-addiction-tied-to-depression-anxiety-in-kids]

Permalink

The conclusions Tito is supposedly drawing aren't supported by Gentile's methodology.


Tito, your subtitle is misleading and is contradicted by one of the quotes in your post: "But what wasn't clear was what comes before what. "

Please consider revising it.

 

[Baresark]

This is not ground breaking news. The fact is, your body has physical needs that playing video games excessively prevent your body from fulfilling. Your mind has needs as well, such as social interaction with people in front of you using your voice and requiring you to read what people are communicating with body language. Anyone who would not agree with findings such as this has not really put an ounce of thought into their life.

There are 6 concepts involved in personal wellness. They are: Mental, Emotional, Physical, Spiritual, Environmental, and Social. Basically, if you are doing activities that hinder the development or exercise of any 1 or more of these items, you will not be happy nor be able to reach your maximum potential. I can count at least 3 in this list that are cut off when playing video games.

PS. I loves me some good video games, but I have experienced this first hand. You don't need to be addicted, you just need to do a couple of marathon gaming sessions to understand this.