Colton Mercer

1-Chen, Oliffe, Kelly, “Internet Gaming Disorder: An Emergent Health Issue for Men” PubMed,
2018, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29606034/

This article is about some of the negative effects that video games can have on the brain. It covers
internet gaming disorder and how being addicted to video games and the internet can have a negative
effect on the mind and the life of a person. It is factual and written by a credible nursing college.

I will use this article to keep my information from being unbiased. Writing something that only includes
positive effects makes something look like it is perfects and doesn’t have any downsides. By using this
article I can show that although video games can be good for the mind, there is always a limit.

2- Dos Santos et al, “Active Video Games for Improving Mental Health and Physical Fitness- An
Alternative for Children and Adolescents during Social Isolation: An Overview” PubMed, 2021,
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33572159/

This article is about the improvement of motor function and the physical aspects of the body. It is a
compilation from twelve studies showing the benefits for people with muscular problems. It also covers
a little on mental improvement but being that the video games being studied are more based around
movement the benefits were mostly physical.

This article is helpful for broadening the spectrum of benefits that video games provide. Although the
main focus of my research is to show the benefits on the mind, it is helpful to show that the benefits of
video games are not limited to that.

3-Brennan, Dan MD “Are There Mental Health Benefits of Videogames?”, WebMD, 2021,
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-benefits-of-video-games

This article covers a lot of the different benefits that video games can have. It lists them out and explains
how each improvement is related to playing video games. This article also goes a step further in showing
what types of video games can help people improve in different areas of mental development.

I will use this article to back most of my information and to provide specific benefits for anyone who
reads this research. I will also use the information to show how each improvement can be done and
what type of video game helps to stimulate that behavior.

4-Sweet, Joni, “Videogames Could Hold Untapped Potential in Treatment of Mental Illness”,
verywellMind, 2021, https://www.verywellmind.com/video-games-could-treat-mental-illness-study-
shows-5190213

This article is a review of a case study that involved using video games to try and improve the mental
state of people with mental illnesses. It broke down the results of people with specific illnesses and
what videogames did to help there illness. The article is a building block for trying to use video games as
a treatment for mental illnesses.

This article will help me to break down the information even further. I can inform people on specific
mental illnesses and how video games helped to improve the mental state of people suffering from
them.

5- Book: Bean, Anthony M, Working with Video Gamers and Games in Therapy, Routledge, 2018,
Print.

This book was written by a therapist who worked with people that played video games. He wrote this
book to try and explain behaviors and why people who play certain video games may behave a certain
way.

This book can be helpful to show the results of someone who spent time studying both the positive and
negative effects on people who play video games. By using this information I can provide unbiased data
on both sides of this spectrum.

6-Social Media: Pasker, Jess, (@artamessjess), “TikTok”, 11-21-2021, “I suffer from anxiety and
depression. I found gaming has helped me live with it”

This tweet is based around someone's personal experiences. It talks about how someone suffered from
mental disorders and video games helped them. This is not good information though because it is an
opinion and could be subject to dependent variables that went un-noticed.

I will probably not be using this source in my research. Though it is helpful to get information from all
sources of media, social media can not always be trusted for validity and the source could very well just
be someone’s opinion.

7- Lin, Rebecca. “The Potential for Video Games to Improve Mental Health Care Access.” The
Potential for Video Games to Improve Mental Health Care Access | Department of English, 2021,
https://english.umd.edu/research-innovation/journals/interpolations/fall-2021/potential-video-
games-improve-mental-health.

This article is about how video games have proven to be successful treatment for mental illnesses such
as depression and anxiety in the past. It claims that this field should be studied more to see just how
successful this treatment can be. It is also written to spread awareness to counselors because video
games as a treatment is not a very well known topic.

This article will is useful for spreading awareness to the gatekeepers of mental treatment. I can also use
this article to show the benefits of video games on mental illnesses as specific as depression and anxiety.
8- von der Heiden, Juliane M, et al. “The Association between Video Gaming and Psychological
Functioning.” Frontiers in Psychology, Frontiers Media S.A., 26 July 2019,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6676913/.

This article was written to try and move the light that people shine on video games effecting people in a
negative manner to shining light on the positive psychological effects of video games. This is the whole
purpose of my research and most of my data currently falls in line with the research of this article.

I will use this article to help back the claims that I make in my research. This article will help me validate
the facts that I present and help my research to stay credible and unbiased.

9- Rollins, Shannon. “Video Games and Mental Health: A Powerful Tool for Good or for Bad.”
Esports Healthcare, 3 Feb. 2021, https://esportshealthcare.com/video-games-and-mental-health/.

This article talks about both the positive and negative effects of playing video games. It shows that the
positive effects of video games are more of a passive development where the player gradually improves
just by playing. Some of the major negative effects however, can be combatted by being conscious of
the situation and actively doing things to either not play too much, and stay fit and healthy.

This article will help me to not only back my research on the positive effects, but also show some
solutions to combat the negative effects. By showing that there are ways to triumph over the negative
effects, using video games for their positive effects seems like a much more reasonable treatment.

10- Houser, Kristin. “Video Games for Mental Health Are Coming.” Freethink, 21 Mar. 2022,
https://www.freethink.com/health/video-games-and-mental-health.

This article talks about how current video games can be therapeutic even though they weren’t created
for that purpose. This means that video games can still be developed specifically to increase their
benefits and decrease their downsides.

This article will help me to back the solutions proposed for negating the downsides of video games. The
more negative effects that can be overcome, the more beneficial the positive effects can be without
worrying about potential downsides.