Gaming addicts more likely to be depressed, MRI scans suggest
PSYCHIATRISTS have issued a warning over the link between depression and video game addiction, after MRI scans revealed for the first time the potential damage caused to young brains.
The scan images showed the signals between the different parts of gaming addicts’ brains were disrupted, driving them to continue playing but also worsening their depression. The “emotional” part of the brain, responsible for the feelings of depression, was shown to be overriding the “executive” part of the brain that could rein-in their addiction.
Dr Louise Theodosiou, a leading adolescent psychiatrist with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said it was an important study in linking gaming addiction with a rise in depression among the young which studies show affects up to one in four teenagers.
“If you have something distorting the relationship between the emotional and analytical parts of the brain, it’s potentially damaging and also very compulsive,” she said.
“We need to find creative ways to deal with children who are retreating online, particularly when they are doing it to the exclusion of all else.
“We are aware of children having deep vein thrombosis from playing games non-stop. There was a case of a young man dying in Asia after 48 hours of gaming. If you are living in an online world, there is a risk of a disconnect from your physical self that is particularly dangerous.”
The Daily Telegraph is campaigning for a statutory duty of care on the gaming and social media giants to protect children from online harms.
Scientists in China and the US have led the way in using MRI scans to demonstrate the similarities in brain patterns between gaming addicts and people with addictions to drugs, alcohol and gambling.
In the new study, the researchers from Beijing Normal University took a group of more than 2,000 students, aged 16 to 21, who had gamed more than two hours a day over the past four years.
The study group was then refined to 63 gaming addicts who had MRI brain scans.
Using psychological questionnaires, they found those who were addicted to gaming were twice as likely to be depressed as those who did not game.
From the scans, they could see that the signals from the left amygdala in the gaming addicts’ brains, which is responsible for emotions such as depression, were disrupting their prefrontal cortex, which controls reason, making them more likely to stay online and also worsening their depression.
The discovery offers psychiatrists an insight into how they could develop and test therapies to treat people suffering addiction to gaming, which was recently classified by the World Health Organisation as an official medical disorder treatable on the NHS.
♦as four in 10 grandparents will be left in charge of children over the summer, according to a Yougov poll, an online awareness group has created a guide for them to keep youngsters safe, since many grandparents do not understand the digital world. The Internet Matters guide covers screen time, gaming, cyber bullying, sexting and more.