A group of South Korean psychiatrists say they have successfully reduced “StarCraft” addiction by giving players a popular antidepressant.
Do YOU have a Starcraft addiction? Well, if so, you’re in luck. Seems as though the antidepressant Bupropion has been seen to decrease an “addict’s” cravings to play the game. The study was done in South Korea, where (as we all know) Starcraft is basically a national sport. They studied 11 addicts (those who played 30+ hours/week) and 8 “normal” players (about an hour/day game time). The results showed some decrease in “cravings” from the addicts. With further reading, we find out that there was no placebo group, so there is no significant way to prove that it was the drug that helped so far. Truthfully, the results haven’t sold me yet, but what do you think?
Decide for yourself.
Can’t really get addicted to a game that you can’t win at.
I have never taken an anti depressant nor have I been playing a game for long enough for it to be a problem(Halo PC helped me, actually), so I can’t really picture this.
Also, South Korea.
Well, let’s just say that there may be room for some more real research here. The non scientific nature of the “study” puts me off a bit. A sample size of less than twenty in it’s entirety is a too small to draw any definitive conclusions.
This is not to say that further research should not be done on the idea, but perhaps seeing if people suffering from social phobia are more likely to be addicted to video games (thus benefit from the use of Wellbutrin, and be able to join society) would be a start.
yeah coz that’s what you need when playing Starcraft II, drugs. that’ll make the hurt go away. seriously though, it is a very cool game.
Humans are so stupid.
First off we NEVER talk about anything in science as proving this or proving that. Proving something means that 100% of the time we can be 100% sure something happens or doesn’t happen. Science inherrantly is always being moved forward to some extent so technically nothing is really ever proved. This also means by assumption that there is no such thing as fact. But what scientists do work in is probability.
Also technically speaking there isn’t really any such thing as “normal” because everybody is different in some way. I guess a better way of saying normal is “neurotypical subjects” or “participants that are neurotypical”.
There really should have been a placebo though at the very least. The participants were given the drugs knowing what they were taking and expecting to be “cured”, self fulfilling prophecy etc. This is known as a confounding varible, something that messes up the entire result. But I expect when this research is peer reviewed this will be something that will be heavily criticised. Another criticism I would expect to see is that the actual sample size was rather small… as jabmann says really the smallest sample should be at the very least 20.
I would even suggest something called a double blind study would be better than a placebo. This is where the placebo is given but the doctors that administer the drugs and placebo have no idea which is which, only the researchers back at the lab would know.
Another thing that can be measured is the overall effect size. Even if the drug had a significant effect this significant effect could be extremely small and so wouldn’t be a viable treatment.
In my opinion drugs should only be used as a last resort if all other known treatments have been tried and have failed.