People naturally play games in search of happiness, and according to a study by German researchers, Nintendo's signature game, Super Mario Odyssey, may be able to significantly reduce depression, allowing red hats to bring unhappy people out of the shadows.
Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Bern in Germany published their findings in the medical journal Frontiers in Psychiatry. They conducted an experiment on reducing depressive symptoms, which observed a total of 46 patients with clinical depression, who were divided into three groups, the first group played Super Mario Odyssey, the second group was trained using the cognitive training program "CogPack", and the third group used standard treatment modalities (including medication and psychotherapy).
According to the researchers' statistics, patients with major depressive disorder in the first group had a significant reduction in symptoms during the six-week experiment, while the other two groups had a smaller reduction in symptoms. They concluded that "video games may be a cost-effective and feasible intervention for people with major depressive disorder that can be combined with conventional treatment." Of course, the researchers also said that this was not a blind study, and that participants knew which group they were participating in, and they were likely to have psychological expectations. At the same time, the sample size of the experiment is small, and it may not be universal.