Study: Gaming linked to depression.

[Rechan]

Did anyone else notice:

"The study, which was carried out in the Seattle-Tacoma area..."

I lived in Sea-Tac for a while. That area has more overcast days than any other area in the USA, higher than normal % of SAD sufferers, and (as anyone who is familiar with their music scene knows) a heroin epidemic.

Starbucks is in decline. The Seahawks and Mariners are underperforming. Heart, Pearl Jam and Queensryche are (arguably) past their prime. Jimi Hendrix, Layne Staley, Mia Zapata and Andrew Wood are all still dead.

OF COURSE they found depression at a higher rate!

Not to mention the current economic climate.

 

[Eosin the Red]

Hmm,

I'd tend to agree just on the basis of most gamers being more sedentary and a propensity to both eat like dung and hold extra weight. If that won't jack your brain and body chemistry then I am not sure what would. It almost seems worthy of a Foxworthy type spiel --

You might be a depressed gamer if you think pizza and coke for three meals is acceptable.
You might be a depressed gamer if you think fruits and veggies are what them vegans eat (not the aliens from the planet Vega).
You might be a depressed gamer if you played WoW (Slavelords or Fantasy Football) for more than 18 hours strait.
You might be a depressed gamer if you think you only need to find a manual of gainful health to improve the chances of surviving a heart attack before the age of fifty.
You might be a depressed gamer if Blackleaf died.

Being a gamer over 35 and obese does not equal depression but it sure is a good stew in which to ferment depression and about a billion other health issues, which lead to more depression and more gaming...

On a side note, I'd bet more gamers smoke than standard population. Subjectively speaking, it certainly seems that way.

 

[ppaladin123]

Did anyone else notice:

"The study, which was carried out in the Seattle-Tacoma area..."

I lived in Sea-Tac for a while. That area has more overcast days than any other area in the USA, higher than normal % of SAD sufferers, and (as anyone who is familiar with their music scene knows) a heroin epidemic.

Starbucks is in decline. The Seahawks and Mariners are underperforming. Heart, Pearl Jam and Queensryche are (arguably) past their prime. Jimi Hendrix, Layne Staley, Mia Zapata and Andrew Wood are all still dead.

OF COURSE they found depression at a higher rate!

That shouldn't matter since the non-gamers they surveyed were also from the same area. The effect of the area thus drops out of any explanation of the variance found across groups.

 

[Derulbaskul]

Yep, this study is fundamentally flawed. Surely they could have found at least one statistician who knows, inter alia, the difference between cause and effect?

Overweight? C'mon, 80% of the US population is supposed to be in the overweight to obese/morbidly obese range (I'm from Oz- we're supposed to be around 60%... and a bridge was closed today to allow for a rescue by crane of a 300 kg man from his apartment above the bridge because he had a chronic asthma attack).

Oh well, I'm sure the tabloids will have some fun and one or more ambulance chasers will go after a gaming company on the basis of this study. Other than that, the document belongs in the fantasy section of my book collection.

The above is my knee-jerk first reaction without reading the article properly. Please disregard it for being a knee-jerk first reaction. Thanks to those who pointed out the manifold errors in the above. Now to read the article in more detail....

 

[ppaladin123]

Yep, this study is fundamentally flawed. Surely they could have found at least one statistician who knows, inter alia, the difference between cause and effect?

Overweight? C'mon, 80% of the US population is supposed to be in the overweight to obese/morbidly obese range (I'm from Oz- we're supposed to be around 60%... and a bridge was closed today to allow for a rescue by crane of a 300 kg man from his apartment above the bridge because he had a chronic asthma attack).

Oh well, I'm sure the tabloids will have some fun and one or more ambulance chasers will go after a gaming company on the basis of this study. Other than that, the document belongs in the fantasy section of my book collection.

All the findings (over-weight, depressed, etc.) are in comparsision to the non-gaming group also surveyed. Gamers are more likely to be depressed and/or overweight than non-gamers. There is nothing obviously wrong with the way the survey was conducted.

In addition, the article itself notes that it is only a correlation and that gaming may in fact be a form of self-medication for depressed individuals rather than the cause of the depression.

Don't be too hasty.

 

[S'mon]

I think tabletop RPGs are a great antidote to depression. All that social interaction and outward focus. Online chat/text-based real-time gaming too, to a lesser extent.

 

[weem]

Interesting.

I'm almost at that age (32 now) but I have never been happier/less depressed.

But then again, my motto is "Laugh Every Day" and I have been doing that for a looong time now

...I also get to play D&D twice a week so that helps too, right? hehe

 

[ProfessorCirno]

"The researchers hypothesized that depressed individuals might be turning to games as a means of self-medication, immersing themselves in a game's world as a way of forgetting about real-life troubles."

I'm linking this because for Christ's sake did any of you even read the study before commenting on it. The actual scientists aren't saying "OMG GAMING = DEPRESSION AND BEING OVERWEIGHT."

Linked it before I could. Sadly, we're pretty solidly in "The Internets" section right now.

 

[Umbran]

Yep, this study is fundamentally flawed. Surely they could have found at least one statistician who knows, inter alia, the difference between cause and effect?

Um, we haven't seen the study itself.

And, the article explains that the causation could go in either direction - maybe gaming -> overweight/depressed, or maybe gaming is a result of (the article posits an escape from) being overweight and depressed.

I have to say this strongly - the state of science reporting in the world is not good. However, it is not in any way assisted by incomplete reading of what the reporting does say. You lose the right to criticize the study and report if you obviously did not internalize what the report said. Please, take the time to read more carefully.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Seems to me that very little can be taken from the article as written, for instance it reports that male gamers were found to be more overweight and spent more time on the internet than non gamer males and that female gamers were more depressed and had lower general health than non gamer women.
So this begs the question, were gamer males more depressed than non gamer males?
I dunno
Did gamer males have lower general health than gamer females? I would suspect so but again the article is silent.
Do female gamers have more internet usage than non gamer females?
I could go on picking the article apart like this some more.
It is as if the reporter only picked up some randon fact from a press release and published them.
The only piece of information that I got from the article, that I would not have guessed before hand, was that female gamers are more likely to be depressed than non gamer females. One could infer that the same applies to male gamers but if so why quote a distinction.
There is simply not enough consistient information to infer any type of causation.