Having kids using mental health care gaming works best at a computer, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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if you’re using a gaming program to help a child with ADHD, depression or anxiety, these technologies work best if they are done on a computer. That’s one finding of a study surveying video games to help with these mental health issues in children and adolescents by Barry Bryant, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins.

Bryant: If you think about being at a computer for a certain period of time you can focus on the game content, get the most out of it versus maybe being upside down in the back seat of a minivan playing on a smartphone. Our hope is that these findings will allow frontline providers, people like pediatricians to be able to make recommendations that are based in evidence for what would be helpful to their patients while they're waiting to get linked up with psychiatric provider, and then when they do link up with a psychiatrist and a therapist they'll be starting from a better place.                  :30

Bryant is hopeful that as more games are developed and validated, they can help teach skills that help children and adolescents cope with anxiety, ADHD and depression, and do so in an age-appropriate way. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.