Level Up Your Mental Health With Gaming

If you’re reading this, there’s no doubt that you or someone you care about spends some (or a lot) of their time gaming. You may have also wondered: when might this exciting and engaging habit be helpful, harmful, or something in-between?

More than ever, gaming is part of our life context, especially for youth – though you may be surprised to learn that the average gamer is 34 years old and has children (https://techjury.net/blog/video-game-demographics/#gref). It is a powerful media capable of telling intricate, artistic, interactive stories (looking at you, The Last of Us!); a compelling venue for connection and relationship building; an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars; and a fact of life that for most of us is rarely more than a few feet away in the form of a mobile phone.

There is no shortage of research and media attention on the assumed negative effects of video game use – it’s easy to find sensationalized headlines blaming video games for mental illness, addictions, even terrible violent crimes. But too often this veers into fearful overgeneralization. Scapegoating “big bad tech” for the most worrisome societal issues of their time turns out to be common, but often doesn’t stand the test of time – for example, did you know that in the 1920s, arguments were made against including crossword puzzles in newspapers due to fears that women would become too literate?

The technical term for this phenomenon is Moral Panic, which is “a widespread feeling of fear, often irrational, that something evil threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society” (Wikipedia). Psychologist Dr. Rachel Kowert (https://rkowert.com/), author of The Video Game Debate and other books on the relationship between gaming and mental health, notes that Moral Panics deflect resources away from the actual underlying causes of social problems. So, we end up blaming video games for things like violent behaviour when better explanations exist – they are just more complicated and make less sensational headlines.

To be clear, problematic gaming does exist. It just represents a tiny fraction of gaming behaviour, estimated to be somewhere between 6-11%. Here’s what to look for in terms of problematic gaming, according to the World Health Organization:

• Loss of control over gaming (gaming takes precedence over other activities despite clearly negative consequences)
• Significantly impaired functioning (e.g. school, work, relationships)
• A duration of at least a year

If that sounds like someone you know, then it is probably time for them to cut down, and they may need help doing so. Helping them find a therapist who is comfortable talking about healthy and unhealthy gaming habits could make a big difference!

Non-problematic gaming is estimated to account for 89-94% of all gaming behaviour (https://reviewlution.ca/resources/video-game-statistics/). So it is much more likely that a person’s gaming habits fall within a “normal” range, and some may even be using gaming as a way to maintain or improve their mental health!

What are the mental health benefits of gaming?

Many studies have shown powerful mental health benefits from gaming. Compared to non-gamers, a 2002 study of 1300 adolescents found that gamers have lower levels of depressed mood, substance use, school absenteeism, risky behaviour, and disobedience; while also having better GPA, more family closeness, and more engagement in clubs (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0193397302001247?via%3Dihub). Other studies have shown that gaming benefits emotional and intellectual development, creativity and curiosity, reading and abstract thinking, pain management, self-esteem, and social functioning – especially for neurodivergent players like those with ADHD or Autism.

Research on the positive effects of gaming is growing every year. There are also plenty of personal and anecdotal accounts of video games providing an invaluable mental health boost to people in otherwise very dark times – a simple internet search will yield dozens of examples: veterans using games to help cope with symptoms of trauma, cancer patients relying on games during intense hospital stays, people with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and many other psychiatric conditions finding normalization and developing coping strategies and life skills with the help of the games they play; the list goes on and on. Indeed, many games are now developed specifically with powerful mental health themes either embedded into their story or mechanics (https://checkpointorg.com/mental-health-representation/, https://www.thegamer.com/mental-illness-health-video-games/, https://www.gameinformer.com/opinion/2020/09/30/games-to-play-for-better-mental-health-understanding).

If you want to get the most mental health impact from gaming possible, I have a few suggestions as a starting point. But because this is such a diverse, exciting, and developing area, the ways video games can positively impact mental health will go far beyond this list. Some therapists are even using gaming in various ways in their work with their clients!

Connection. More than ever before, gaming can be a valuable source of connection, support, and positive relationships with other people. Many games incorporate cooperative elements, and include built-in matchmaking systems to make finding other players as easy as the click of a button. If you have fears about “toxic gaming communities,” know that this is usually limited to certain kinds of competitive games, which are getting better all the time at setting up and enforcing good codes of conduct.

In addition to connecting with other players, many single player games that have an emphasis on roleplaying or narrative elements provide rich opportunities for interacting with interesting and evocative protagonists and “non-player characters” (NPCs). Like well-written characters in other media, these provide engaging opportunities for empathy, perspective taking, moral decision making, and modeling of many different varieties. The difference with games is that a player can interact with these characters, trying out different choices over time and seeing the impact of their actions play out.

Skill-building. Play is an exercise in skill-building by its very nature. Games are no exception, and provide an opportunity to build and practice some very important ones. Distress tolerance is an important skill that many games encourage through the inclusion of learning curves, challenges, and unpredictable outcomes. Every time a player fails at a game’s task, they experience some level of frustration or distress that they must work through in order to progress in their desired direction. Repeated experiences teach a player that frustration, distress, and even anxiety are a normal, healthy, and surmountable part of growth. The independent game Celeste is a wonderful example of this.

Other skills games are great at cultivating include emotional intelligence (Life is Strange, Persona 5), creativity (Minecraft), organization, executive functioning, time/resource management (Stardew Valley), and problem solving.

Stress relief. According to Dr. Stuart Brown, author of the book “Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul,” (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4997659-play) play must appear to be purposeless, all-consuming, and fun. Play is not about productivity, but because it is such a great source of relief from stress, it makes us much more productive overall. Stress relief means a great deal of different things to different people, but thanks to their playful nature, videogames can be a safe space for anything from cathartic stress relief (venting frustration in a healthy way) to a legitimate relaxation and mindfulness practice.

So, next time you or someone you care about fires up their console or PC for a gaming session, consider ways you might be able to bring these benefits more intentionally into their play. If you’re a gamer, consider the ways gaming adds value to your life in the form of connection, skill-building, and stress relief – and lean into this! If you’re a parent, show interest and ask your kids about the games they are playing, and what they get out of their gaming time. Better yet, play with them! You just might find yourself enjoying an immensely rewarding new hobby.