Video Games for Well-being

                                                                                         

Overall well-being is complicated to achieve in the modern world, between the stresses of work and the precious time required to eat and rest properly after the work is done. For better or for worse, the mental and physical aspects of a person’s well-being are inextricably tied together. A positive way to look at this fact is that if you succeed at stress reduction you are consequently benefiting your physical health at the same time.

While a good deal of stress is caused by worrying about important things like paying the bills or meeting that next deadline at work, recent psychological research has demonstrated that a significant portion of an individual’s stress comes from social anxiety, or the time and energy spent worrying about how one is perceived by others. The problem with this kind of stress is that it does very little to help you meet any particular goals and yet it carries with it just as much negative impact on mental and physical health.

According to the Mayo Clinic, chronic activation of stress hormones can raise your heart rate and increase your blood pressure and blood lipid (cholesterol and triglyceride) levels. These are risk factors for both heart disease and stroke.

Cortisol levels also appear to play a role in the accumulation of abdominal fat, which gives some people an "apple" shape. People with apple body shapes have a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes than do people with "pear" body shapes, in which weight is more concentrated in the hips.

Fortunately there is a simple program with significant and well demonstrated results that you can add into your current stress-management routine with only five minutes a day. Developed by Dr. Mark Baldwin and other McGill researchers, Mind Habits is a video game designed to help people cope with anxiety that has the added bonus of reducing levels of the stress hormone cortisol by 17%, according to a study in October's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In a recent study at McGill University, Mind Habits recruited 23 employees of a telemarketing call centre to play one of their games, which involves clicking on the one smiling face among many frowning faces on a screen as quickly as possible.

The call-centre employees did this each workday morning for a week. They filled out daily stress and self-esteem questionnaires and had their cortisol levels tested through saliva analysis on the final day of the experiment. These tests showed an average 17 percent reduction in cortisol production compared to a control group that played a similar game but without the smiling faces. Since cortisol is associated with heart-related conditions, there could be immediate health benefits to go along with the emotional well-being from reduced stress!

About the author:
Dr. Baldwin is a psychology professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University, in Montreal Canada, and is the Lead Inventor of the software licensed to MindHabits Inc. Andrew Kozloski is a helpful writer and Mind Habits enthusiast/employee. Try the game for free here.

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