If you're gaming too much, a Dungeons and Dragons campaign could be good for you

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-04-09 09:01

Australia; International; SA

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Tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons could be good for the mental health of people with social anxiety and signs of gaming addiction, according to Australian and international researchers. The team tested a tabletop role-playing game as a 10-week mental health intervention, recruiting 20 adults with symptoms of problematic gaming and moderate social anxiety who had played online role-playing games in the past, but not tabletop games. 18 participants completed the 10-week game, which was developed specifically to help develop their social skills. The researchers say over the course of the study, almost all participants showed signs of lower social anxiety, 15 participants had lower symptoms of problematic gaming, and 11 reported feeling less lonely.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Dungeons and therapy - Could taking role-playing offline help with social anxiety and problematic gaming? This pilot study enlisted twenty gamers with social anxiety and sub-clinical problematic video game use to play the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons for ten weeks. It found most participants saw some reduction in anxiety and gaming symptoms. This is the first quantitative study of the therapeutic use of Dungeons and Dragons and should now be tested with clinical participants, the authors said. Open Science

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Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Flinders University, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Funder: The present registered report was supported by a research grant from the ‘Direction Générale de la Santé du Canton de Vaud’ (DGS-VD-Switzerland) awarded to Joël Billieux. Loïs Fournier was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under a ‘Doc.CH’ Doctoral Fellowship [Grant ID: P000PS_211887]. The funding agencies had no role in design, data collection and analysis, publication decision, or manuscript preparation.

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