It’s Super Effective: Players Say Pokémon Go Helps Their Mental Health

According to some folks, Pokémon Go has helped their mental health by enabling them to go outside and walk around a bit, which is a fairly effective method of dealing with the negative effects that come with depressive bouts. Depression and many mental illnesses can often make one feel they should stay at home, so given the fact that Pokémon Go‘s works by tracking players’ movements and location, people feel motivated to leave the house and be outside for a bit.

Pokemon Go is literally making people with depression and anxiety and agoraphobia leave the house and explore the world and socialise.

— Yo! (@jasonjarmoosh) July 8, 2016

in all seriousness, pokemon go is one of the greatest things that has happened to my mental health

— six (@osskov) July 8, 2016

Much of the praise for Pokémon Go‘s supposed mental health benefits remain anecdotal, and not everybody deals with the same mental health problems the same way, but there’s a lot to be said for the game’s ability to get people up and active. As mentioned earlier, sometimes getting up and out of bed can go a long way to helping someone feel better about things in general. It doesn’t quite “cure” everything (nothing really does), but being outside in the sun and maybe taking a walk with a friend or two while catching some Pokémon sounds like it can only help.

All that being said, it would be quite interesting to see a study look into these benefits to see if there’s something about this or any other “get up and go”-type games. There’s hard research into the benefits of going outside to improve one’s mood, but looking at it through the lens of gaming and what games like these can do for people sounds incredibly intriguing.

Another one of the best things to come out of Pokémon Go‘s release are all these great jokes and memes. I mean, like…

Better run before you end up like the rest of your family…#PokemonGO pic.twitter.com/oBUzaT1lxJ

— PokemonGO (@PokemonGoMemes) July 8, 2016

Live footage of #PokemonGO servers. pic.twitter.com/xuqjSn4i8x

— PokemonGO (@PokemonGoMemes) July 8, 2016

Very extra yes to all of this.

(via attn:)

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