Curing ADHD With Videogames

No longer are videogames just a form of entertainment. Now they are medicine as well!

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The times when games were viewed as a complete waste of time are long gone. And American scientists thought to themselves – maybe videogames could be used in healthcare as well. The U.S. FDA (United States Food and Drug Administration) announced on Monday that it has approved of using the videogame called EndeavorRx as part of a treatment for children who suffer from ADHD. This is quite the historic moment – no other videogame before was approved to be used in healthcare.

While EndeavorRx certainly isn't your typical triple-A game that would sell millions of copies – it's a quite normal casual game not that different from classic games. But it was made to treat ADHD – in other words, enhance children's ability to keep focus. The developers from the company Akili cooperated with pediatricians to created and it should be used with children aged 8 – 12.

But there still is the question of whether the game will be approved to be used for treating ADHD. The FDA assesses the videogame just as it assesses other treatments. And it got approved. This means that the videogame can now be prescribed by doctors that suffer from ADHD.

Now the question remains, can the game help children who suffer from ADHD? The company did perform 5 clinical studies that had 600 children in them and one of them had very promising results as the focus on one-third of the children improved. But even this study says that the current evidence isn't good enough to have the game replace current treatments.

Obviously, the FDA is trying something new. While EndeavorRx may not help but there is some hope and it will certainly not make things worse. And the FDA doesn't say it should be used alone but only in combination with other therapeutic programs and drugs.

But in the end, it opens the door to a whole new class of games. Games that will be used for medicinal purposes.

Sources:

• https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-permits-marketing-first-game-based-digital-therapeutic-improve-attention-function-children-adhd

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