Can gaming interventions help treat youth depression or anxiety?

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Theo Kyriacou and Andie Ashdown summarise a systematic review which finds that gaming interventions may be useful for depression, but not anxiety, in young people.

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Can Tetris help to reduce the intensity and distress of traumatic intrusive memories?

Sometimes life seems like Tetris: it throws at you several, different and unrelated things, and you try to mix and match them, and fit together everything at your best in a seemingly infinite struggle. 
Trying to clear the stage now and then, and maybe get that winning combo, just before everything becomes too overwhelming...

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Shot on Canon 550D, edit in Lightroom Classic CC.

Tanya Garg blogs a study which finds that visuospatial tasks like playing Tetris, do not reduce the intensity and distress of intrusions after watching a traumatic film.

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Game on! How can video games help children with autism?

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Eleana Frisira blogs about a review, which finds that video games can be interventions that help some children with autism, particularly in relation to cognitive training.

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Quit playing games with my… head? Online therapeutic games for LGBTQ+ youth #MindTech2019

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Will Koehler writes his debut Mental Elf blog on an exploratory study about how LGBT youth use the internet in relation to their mental health.

Follow #MindTech2019 on Twitter today to hear more from the lead author Mathijs Lucassen about this and other recent digital mental health research.

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Tetris for PTSD: behavioural intervention unlikely to vaccinate against intrusions

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Ioana Cristea disputes the claims of a recent proof-of-concept RCT, which aims to prevent intrusive memories after trauma via a brief intervention involving Tetris computer game play in the emergency department.

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Associations between video game use, academic performance and mental health issues in European primary school children

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Pete Etchells posts his debut Mental Elf blog on a recent study, which explored whether video games were associated with mental illness, cognition or social skills in young children.

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Super Mario changes your brain

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Some of the elves in our neck of the woods like to go on a trip to Mushroom Kingdom from time to time, just to relax and boost their abilities you understand.  Unfortunately being able to double in size or become invincible hasn’t happened in real life yet, but a recent study has looked at [read the full story…]