Video games found to be a very effective stress and anxiety treatment, surpassing medications, EMDR and standalone physiotherapy.
This meta study conducted by Dr. Federica Pallavicini, PhD and associates from the Department of Human Sciences for Education “Riccardo Massaâ€, University of Milano Bicocc, found that video gaming has a significant positive impact on players with high stress and anxiety.
Overall and overwhelmingly, #anxiety studies that emerged from this systematic review reported better improvement after playing a commercially available #videogame compared with not playing the game, surfing the web, watching a film, a passive video game distraction, EMDR therapy, anxiolytic medication (such as Xanax or Ativan) or physiotherapy alone.
#Stress was also positively affected even when compared to stress management training. However, some games were found to increase stress, so game selection did matter and matching game play to the specific needs of the patient did yield better results.
In the end, this quote from the study sums it up best – “it is important to emphasize that not all commercial video games are equal, and their effects strongly depend on specific characteristics of the games”.
