‘Video Games Built for Prevention Can Reduce Teen Depression’ (Dartmouth News – August 17, 2026 – Full article)
Article Excerpt: Few parents or teachers are likely to suggest that teenagers could benefit from playing more video games. But a new study suggests that a growing class of educational games may be a highly effective tool for treating and preventing depression in adolescents.
Dartmouth researchers recruited 532 high school students for one of the largest clinical trials of a video game designed to raise teens’ awareness of mental health issues and substance misuse, according to a report in JAMA Network Open.
The team tracked 269 students who engaged with PlaySmart, a digital behavioral health game developed in the play2PREVENT Lab led by Lynn Fiellin, the study’s senior author and a professor of biomedical data science and medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine.