Video Games and Depression

Just read a great article by Phil Owen on Kotaku.com about video games and depression - Do Video Games Make Depression Worse? It's a follow-up of sorts to a previous article called A Simple Change To a Star Wars Video Game Helped Me Fight Depression.


I deal with migraines (since before I can remember) and now anxiety and depression. The migraines and depression can quickly feed off one another until I'm in a terrible state. I'm also someone who has always either obsessed over one thing for long periods (until I wear myself out), or quickly given up on anything that either couldn't hold my interest or didn't come naturally (like athletic things).

As for gaming, I've never been a "gamer". While I did have an Atari 2600, NES, Super Nintendo and Gameboy when younger, I pretty much played only River Raid, Blades of Steel, Super Mario Bros. games and Tetris exclusively on each particular systems. (There's that obsessive thing.) Now, however, I play Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Compared to a lot of people, I don't play Skyrim very much; but I do tend to play too long per session for my well-being, in my opinion. At least for my physical well-being. But there is one great benefit I've discovered from playing Skyrim.

Not having much of a life to build a structure around makes it difficult to deal with my mental health issues, and it's easy for me to fall prey to habits and activities that only make things worse. Playing Skyrim, however, has provided me with something that I can turn to whenever I feel the urge to fall back on bad habits, thus avoiding those traps. Even though it sometimes means I end up playing the game for too long at a time or too late into the night.

This may seem like a "lesser of two evils" situation to some, but any guilt or regret I may get from playing Skyrim in these situations is microscopic compared to how I'd feel if I'd fallen into one of those traps.

Anyhoo...