Battling Depression With Video Games
Without a doubt, one of our society’s biggest problems are issues surrounding mental health. Far too many people suffer from depression and go on with their life without doing anything about it. After reading Jane McGonigal’s story, How Video Games can Teach Your Brain to Fight Depression, I was pleased to discover that simply playing video games can help people stimulate their brain to combat depression better.
Although I was happy after reading this, I wasn’t particularly surprised. Video games are an amazing way to learn how to keep on trying once you fail until you finally achieve your goal. I can remember countless hours of being stuck on a certain level or not being able to beat a “boss” in a video game, but because of the way video games are programmed, it is hard to quit without succeeding eventually. The best part is that in most video games, it doesn’t matter how many times you fail. As long as you eventually complete the objective it is the same as if you were to have succeeded on your first attempt.
I have always thought of video games as a mindless way to get away from real life problems for a bit, and this article backs up my thoughts. After a long day full of challenges that actually do affect your actual being, such as stressfully studying for a test or preparing for a presentation, it is nice to just sit down, beat some video games, and feel accomplished.
This can be a double edged sword though. I said earlier that most games allow you to fail over and over but once you succeed the game goes on as if you succeeded on your first try, but what about games that count your stats? Many people obsess over their kill death ratio in Call of Duty. I personally start to get upset when I see my losses start to rack up in NHL video games. Is that really a way to escape life’s stresses or is it only adding more stress to your life? In many cases I think it is the latter of the two. Although many people think that this can cause depression, I don’t think that it quite gets to this point for the overwhelming majority of people, but I strongly believe that it can hinder the therapeutic affect that video games can have in helping fight depression.
As I brought up earlier, many people believe that video games can actually cause depression. Researchers have interpreted that many depressed video gamers are actually attempting to self-medicate their problems with video games (McGonigal, 2017). This can cause a downward spiral just as alcoholism can. People become depressed because they have an issue, play video games instead of solving the problem, and then because the problem doesn’t get solved, it gets worse and spirals out of control.
So how can video games stop, or at least help stop this spiraling affect from happening? Video games can help people develop their problem solving techniques as well as their resilience. So now once gamers have learned these skills, instead of having a problem and immediately opting to play video games or going to the bottle, they will resolve the issue no matter how long it takes, then blow some steam off after they are done and play some video games. This is much easier said than done, but it isn’t impossible.
I’m not suggesting that all people who suffer from depression are quitters and don’t know how to deal with their problems, but learning how to overcome problems and be resilient is are both essential skills to have a less stressful life, which can definitely help people stop depression before it starts.
Works Cited
McGonigal, J. (2017, November 8). Slate. Retrieved from slate.com: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/11/in_the_age_of_fake_news_it_s_never_too_early_to_teach_kids_media_literacy.html
