Computer Game Designed To Treat Depression As Effective As Traditional Treatment

New submitter sirlark writes "'Researchers at the University of Auckland tested an interactive 3D fantasy game called Sparx on a 94 youngsters diagnosed with depression whose average age was 15 and a half. Sparx invites a user to take on a series of seven challenges over four to seven weeks in which an avatar has to learn to deal with anger and hurt feelings and swap negative thoughts for helpful ones. Used for three months, Sparx was at least as effective as face-to-face conventional counselling, according to several depression rating scales. In addition, 44% of the Sparx group who carried out at least four of the seven challenges recovered completely. In the conventional treatment group, only 26% recovered fully.' One has to wonder if it's Sparx specifically — or gaming in general — that provides the most benefit, given that most of the symptoms of depression relate to a feeling of being unable to influence one's environment (powerlessness, helplessness, ennui, etc) and games are specifically designed to make one feel powerful but challenged (if they hit the sweet spot)."

Enders game?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone? It's coming. Pretty soon our actions in video games will contribute to the profile built on our web habits. Fun fun fun.

Re:"as effective" doesn't mean "effective"

[Anonymous Coward]

you've not had depression, then.

Re:"as effective" doesn't mean "effective"

[izomiac]

You seem to be thinking of mild depression or even subclinical sadness. This is quite common, as psychiatric disorders tend to be an exaggeration of normal things that everyone feels, so it's easy to underestimate them. You also rarely see them, as holding a job and going out requires a fair degree of psychological health. The last hundred years or so of medical research specifically tests for effectiveness VS a placebo, so it's not like people are just shooting in the dark here. (To throw you a bone, medications don't seem to be very effective against mild depression.) Most of the people I've talked to keep struggling with depression throughout their life and getting treatment means getting better in weeks/months rather than years.

Also, stop getting your medical knowledge from TV, it's wrong. The vast majority of psychologists don't do the couch thing anymore. Plus, CBT (the most common type) isn't really talking about one's feelings at length. If I remember my history right, that sort of therapy died out as psychology progressed beyond Freud. There are likely a few psychologists that still do it, but they cater to rich people with similar misconceptions (it requires almost weekly visits for years before you see significant results -- assuming the psychologist doesn't incorporate newer forms of therapy).

Re:Chronic Depression, type 1 diabetes,

[Kreigaffe]

LOLWAT.

Actually, depression and autism are useful for the species-as-a-whole. Sure, severe depression can be crippling -- but some depression is good for society. The pessimists are the ones who tend to see what's going to go wrong, problems with ideas. Worrying about every little thing, to a degree, means every little thing won't go wrong (some still will, but compare to cheery optimists who don't take time to prepare for unfortunate eventualities).

Autism is also a benefit to society, to a degree. Sure, it can be severe, and that's not helpful -- but good grief, go pick out any famous genius from the past, read up on how strange their behavior was. PROTIP: Some of our greatest advancements in knowledge and science came from the minds of people who had strange and inexplicable obsessive habits, who were not socially apt or adapt.

In short, you're pretty much an idiot lacking any understanding of the societal benefits of diversity.

These things persist in society precisely because they were useful.

Hemophilia? Not so much -- but it's rather rare, and ~1/3 of the cases of it aren't caused by genetic inheritance but rather from random gene mutation.
Diabetes? Not really genetic. There can be a genetic predisposition for it, but that doesn't really CAUSE it -- just makes it more likely to happen.

We've had thousands of years "left to nature" for undesirable traits that hinder survival to be weeded out. That these traits persist should be a pretty big fucking clue to you.

Re:Chronic Depression, type 1 diabetes,

[gweihir]

I agree that this is a severe problem. Unfortunately, the only solutions brought forward to far are completely unacceptable.

Killing people with these diseases off, is obviously unacceptable.

Preventing them from breeding is highly problematic. To give one example, there was a couple in
Austria that recently had their third kid die horribly because they have a known genetic incompatibility and a very high chance of the child being horribly sick. Still, they inflicted this on a third person. There was no legal consequences of them breeding again. They did get convicted because the sickness is treatable today (not pretty), but they instead went for Homeopathy (which, predictably does nothing and the child dies in agony). Yes, even in this extreme case (and I see at least a double manslaughter here, after the first child they knew), nothing was done to prevent them from having more children. The problem are, of course, the various Eugenics programs, in particularly in the 3rd Reich.

Appealing to the insight may work with many, but there are far to many egoists out there for it to be effective.

On the other hand, humans breed like crazy, which causes far more pain, suffering and misery than the egoists that pass serious diseases down to their children. If left unchecked, the human will to reproduce is what may well kill off the human race. Only time will tell what happens. Many industrial nations are already shrinking, so some control mechanism is at work. It may well be that these sicknesses are part of that mechanism.

Re:On behalf of us who've suffered... piss off!

[N_Piper]

"There are always medications but studies have shown that if you treat your depression with drugs, you're likely to get depressed again sooner and the next depression is likely to be deeper... until the medicines don't have enough effect anymore."

You know some of us with actual mental illness really get our knickers in a twist when people start saying we don't need our medicines we just need to Try REALLLLLLLY hard and we'll get better.
If having a sucky life makes you depressed then you aren't mentally ill, you just have a sucky life, it's normal to be depressed then, heck if you are on the proper medication for chronic depression you should be depressed when your life sucks. If all you need is help, love, reassurance and planning to get out of your problem then more power to you. When you have a stable job, loving spouse, safe clean home and pleasant relations with your extended family and you sleep all day because you think if you get up you are liable to slit your wrists that is mental illness.
Anyway what you have and what I have are two very different diseases that happen to share a name, sometimes telling one from the other is difficult so everyone owes it to themselves to explore all the options for treatment. That being said don't call my drugs dangerous and ineffective and I won't call your therapy hippie bullcrap ok?