The Surprising Connection Between Video Games and Anxiety Relief
In recent years, video games have evolved from mere sources of entertainment to versatile tools with therapeutic potential, particularly in helping individuals cope with anxiety. While excessive gaming can have negative consequences, moderate and mindful gaming can provide a range of benefits, including the alleviation of anxiety symptoms.
Stress Reduction and Relaxation
One of the most apparent benefits of video games is their ability to provide an escape from the stresses of everyday life. Engaging in immersive gaming worlds can help individuals relax, unwind, and temporarily shift their focus away from anxious thoughts. The sense of achievement and control that comes from progressing in a game can also contribute to stress reduction.
Distraction from Anxiety Triggers
Video games can serve as a healthy distraction from anxiety triggers and intrusive thoughts. When immersed in a game, players are less likely to dwell on their worries, providing much-needed relief from anxiety symptoms.
Social Connections
Online multiplayer games offer a unique opportunity for individuals to connect with others who share similar interests. Socializing through gaming can help reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness, common contributors to anxiety. Building and maintaining friendships in virtual worlds can also translate into improved social skills and self-esteem in the real world.
Cognitive Benefits
Many video games require strategic thinking, problem-solving, and quick decision-making. Engaging in such activities can help sharpen cognitive skills and divert mental resources away from anxious rumination.
Emotional Regulation
Video games often present players with various challenges and obstacles. Navigating these challenges can foster emotional resilience and help individuals learn to cope with failure, setbacks, and frustration – all of which are valuable skills in managing anxiety.
Goal-Oriented Behavior
Setting and achieving goals within a game can be highly motivating. This sense of accomplishment can transfer to real-life scenarios, encouraging individuals to set and pursue goals that promote their overall well-being.
Mindfulness and Flow
The state of “flow” – a feeling of complete absorption and focus – is commonly experienced during video game sessions. This mindful engagement can be akin to meditation and can promote relaxation and stress reduction.
Self-Expression
Creative and open-world games provide an outlet for self-expression. Players can customize their avatars, build virtual structures, or create art within the game, fostering a sense of control and personalization.
Exposure Therapy
Some therapeutic games are specifically designed to help individuals confront and manage their anxieties. These games use exposure therapy techniques to gradually desensitize players to anxiety triggers, reducing their emotional impact over time.
Supportive Communities
Online gaming communities can provide a sense of belonging and support. Sharing experiences and advice with fellow gamers can create a supportive environment where individuals with anxiety can find understanding and encouragement.
While video games offer these therapeutic benefits, it’s essential to emphasize moderation and balance. Excessive gaming can have adverse effects on mental health. Therefore, it’s crucial to approach gaming mindfully and be aware of its impact on well-being.
Cognitive Aging and the Importance of Lifestyle Factors
As the population ages, risks for cognitive decline threaten independence and quality of life for older adults, presenting challenges to the healthcare system. Nurses and other healthcare professionals are in a unique position to advise clients about cognitive health promotion and to develop interventions that optimize cognition in the growing aging population.
Understanding Cognitive Aging
“Normal” cognitive aging includes established declines in cognitive processes that affect everyday functional abilities for older adults, such as driving, banking, and medication administration. Cognition or intelligence includes abilities like using symbols and abstractions, acquiring new information, and adapting to changing situations.
The intelligence quotient (IQ) was developed to provide an index of cognition, including assessment of mathematical reasoning, word fluency, vocabulary, inductive reasoning, and spatial orientation. Intelligence, learning, and memory are three key cognitive domains that normally change during aging and have implications for maintaining independence and quality of life.
Research has established that age-related patterns of decline in specific intellectual abilities vary among aging individuals, but fluid (or process-based) intelligence declines earlier than crystallized abilities (based on accumulated knowledge). Fluid ability declines occur at younger ages in women, increasing disability for this population that outlives male counterparts. Even crystallized abilities decline by the late 70s, and reductions in perceptual speed start in young adulthood. Most persons experience measurable cognitive loss by age 60, with widespread declines by age 75.
Factors Influencing Cognitive Aging
Theoretically, age-related cognitive changes normally occur as outcomes of distal (early life experiences) or proximal (recent) life events. Distal events, such as physical, cultural, and social conditions, influence cognitive development and functioning. In contrast, current factors like processing speed, size of working memory, inhibition of extraneous environmental stimuli, and sensory losses contribute to reduced cognitive performance in aging.
Cognitive capacity remains intact with aging, but encoding, storage, and retrieval become less efficient or are interrupted by reduced attention and working memory capacity. Slowed processing speed can interfere with problem-solving by extending the time required for an older adult to perceive, interpret, select, and execute responses. Reduced working memory occurs due to slowed processing involving the sequence of recall.
Lifestyle Factors and Cognitive Aging
Research has identified lifestyle practices like education, leisure pursuits, intellectual engagement, and expertise that are associated with successfully maintaining cognitive abilities. Physical activity, diet, and social activity are additional factors linked to maintained cognition in aging that have been used as a basis for interventions to prevent cognitive decline.
The MacArthur Studies of Successful Aging established the psychological and physiological benefits of education on cognition in aging individuals. Education exerts protective effects on both memory and crystallized intelligence (accumulated knowledge), with minor effects on fluid cognition (processing speed and abilities). Cognitive inactivity has been associated with reduced performance on fluid intelligence measures, while use of cognitive abilities can minimize effects of low educational level.
Persons with cognitively stimulating occupations maintain higher cognitive functioning with aging. Occupational complexity or mental activities demanding thought processing and independent judgment have been correlated with higher performance on measures of intellectual flexibility, memory, verbal abilities, fluency, and visual-spatial measures in aging.
Physical activity should enhance cognition as cardiovascular fitness increases cerebral blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain, increasing neuron formation and maintaining brain volume. Several studies have found that physical activity reduces risks for cognitive decline and dementia.
Social involvement and productive activities have also been shown to lower mortality outcomes as much as physical exercise. Elders with higher social activity have lower mortality, and social integration, reflected by participation in community activities, is protective of cognitive abilities in the most advanced age cohorts.
Nutrition has been identified as a critical factor in successful cognitive aging as well as in abnormal cognitive decline, including dementia. Elevated inflammation and vascular disease markers, such as homocysteine, are implicated in abnormal cognitive decline and dementia. Vitamins B6, B12, and folate may reduce homocysteine, while diets featuring polyunsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids are associated with maintained cognition in older adults.
Interventions to Promote Cognitive Aging
Based on correlational research, interventions to promote cognitive performance have been developed and tested. These interventions must establish causal evidence of the effects of cognitive, physical, social, and nutritional interventions on cognitive aging.
Cognitive Interventions
Memory training classes have demonstrated that elders, like young adults, can improve their performance on cognitive tasks including perceptual discrimination, visual search, recognition, recall, and spatial perception. Memory training typically teaches mnemonic strategies, concentration and attention, relaxation, personal insight, self-monitoring, motivation, feedback, and problem-solving.
The Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) clinical trial provided strong evidence of cognitive training effectiveness. Two thousand healthy, community-dwelling older adults were randomly assigned to one of three training groups (verbal episodic memory, inductive reasoning, or processing speed) or a no-contact control group. The 5-year follow-up reported that the cognitive training resulted in better performance on training-specific domains and less functional decline in instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) for the inductive reasoning group.
Physical Activity Interventions
A meta-analysis of 18 clinical trials that examined the impact of fitness interventions on cognition of older adults reported benefits for executive functions, including planning, abstraction, and selection of relevant sensory information. The strongest effects on executive function were noted for combined aerobic exercise and strength training and for more intensive exercise. Women demonstrated greater gains, possibly due to lower baseline exercise levels.
Social Engagement Interventions
The Experience Corps program implemented and tested a cognitive protective intervention in a randomized clinical trial. Older adults worked with elementary school students in supportive interactive roles for 15 hours weekly over the school year. Physical activity, strength, reported social support networks, and cognitive activity significantly increased for these elders, supporting the theory that active involvement with society and engagement in meaningful activity are critical to “successful aging.”
Nutrition Interventions
Clinical trials focusing specifically on nutrition and cognitive aging are needed to further explore nutrition as a potential intervention to improve cognitive function for older adults. A small study of frail older adults with limited or no measurable cognitive decline found that a 6-month trial of a daily enriched drink improved short and intermediate memory, increased plasma B12, and reduced homocysteine levels.
Implications for Practice and Future Research
Clinicians working with older adults in a variety of settings can incorporate knowledge of the beneficial effects of cognitive activity, physical exercise, social involvement, and nutrition into health promotion for older adults. Older adults reporting cognitive declines should undergo cognitive testing to distinguish normal versus pathological changes, providing reassurance and anticipatory guidance.
Nurses and other healthcare professionals should routinely counsel patients on the cognitive benefits of social engagement, balanced nutrition, and physical activity, as well as participation in cognitively demanding activities. Families and significant others should be made aware of the cognitive benefits associated with maintaining social connections and activities with elder family members.
Future research must use rigorous designs with common outcome measures to allow comparison across multiple studies and establish causal relationships between interventions and cognitive aging. Analyses comparing the benefits and effectiveness of different cognitive interventions will be essential to identify best practices for cognitive health promotion.
Clinical trials testing interventions must also assess whether cognitive gains improve performance of everyday activities, as these are critical outcomes for maintaining independence and well-being of older adults. Associated effects of cognitive interventions on improving mood and reducing depression should continue to be explored as secondary outcomes.
Overcoming the bias toward including the healthiest elders in research and failing to reflect a representative population of older adults will be crucial. Future research must also evaluate potential restorative and preventive cognitive interventions for older adults with different cognitive and physical conditions and compare age ranges to determine optimal timing or critical periods for intervention effectiveness.
By incorporating the latest research on cognitive aging and effective interventions, healthcare professionals can empower older adults to take proactive steps toward maintaining their cognitive health and independence. As the population continues to age, these insights will become increasingly valuable in promoting successful cognitive aging and improving quality of life for older adults.
