Dr. Mario, You're Needed In The Psych Ward, Stat!

The holidays can be a tough time for a lot of people. Maybe it's been a tough year, maybe you can't get back home to visit family, or maybe you work retail and you've had to listen to Mariah Carey sing the same song 50 times a day for the past 2 months. The point is, much like Charlie Brown, depression can run rampant as the days grow short and the nights grow bitterly cold.

Fortunately, for those of you side-eying Snoopy's gaudy Christmas display as hard as Charlie Brown did, another pop culture icon is here to alleviate the blues, holiday or otherwise, courtesy of a study published by a group of German scientists. According to them, recent research has shown video games to have some promise in alleviating symptoms of major depressive disorder, so to further test this theory, they gathered a group of 50 people with MDD and split them into three groups for a 6-week intervention. The first group received standard therapy, the second group received a cognitive training computer program called CogPack, and the lucky third group received Nintendo Switches.

Gee, it sure is a mystery why the third group saw the biggest improvement in their depressive symptoms.

Okay, okay, fine: the third group were directed to play Super Mario Odyssey for the intervention period on provided Switches. However, the results were no joke, as those who got to jump around New Donk City with everyone's favorite Italian plumber saw a 50% improvement in their depressive symptoms, compared with the improvements seen with those who received CogPack, and even beating out those who received standard MDD therapy. 

In addition, and to absolutely no one's surprise, the Super Mario Odyssey group also reported significantly higher motivation to continue their treatment, compared with the CogPack group. So, big thanks to the scientists of Germany, who have effectively told us that people would rather play a critically acclaimed video game than a boring educational computer program. Stay tuned for next week's big news story: People prefer Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to having their teeth pulled out.