A study conducted in Germany in 2023 (published in the journal Froniers in Psychiatry) found that video games are an effective tool in combating depression. For the six-week trial, 46 people with major depressive disorder (aka clinical depression) were selected and divided into three groups:

• participants of the first (16 people) relied on traditional treatment methods (drugs, psychotherapy);
• representatives of the second person who applied to the special computer program of cognitive training CogPack (16 people);
• Third place (14 people) regularly played the 3D adventure platformer Super Mario Odyssey on Nintendo Switch.

At the beginning and end of the study, participants were evaluated for symptoms of depression (Beck’s depression scale), motivation to participate in cognitive training, and visual-spatial short-term memory (Wechsler’s memory scale).

According to the results of the study, those who played Super Mario Odyssey showed an almost two-fold decrease in depressive symptoms, while the improvements in representatives of the other two groups were not as significant.

While participants in the third group also showed increased motivation, CogPack users showed the greatest improvement in visual-spatial memory scores.

The authors of the study, led by Moritz Bergmann, argued that the experimental results could be affected by the small sample size and the participants’ awareness of the test objectives. Despite the mixed results, researchers concluded that video games may be a cost-effective and effective way to treat clinical depression when combined with traditional methods.