Casual Games can help your mental health

I have mentioned this before, but feel it is important enough to keep repeating

Unfortunately the article linked to in the last post has been turned into a pay to view thing, which even the glorious bugmenot can't sort out, but this new article from Yahoo! talks about things from a slightly different perspective.

The study cataloged research papers and media stories about cognitive exercise. According to the report, research indicates that people who maintain “healthy cognitive loads” like playing chess, doing crosswords and other activities appear to have lower rates of dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease and other cognitive problems. It’s not just about working your mind, though — it’s equally important to remain physically active and engage in social activity, according to the research.

This is interesting to me partly because my Grandfather had Alzheimers, so I am very aware of the effects this can have on people and anything to help combat it is good, and also because it focuses on games in general. That is it talks about games like Chess as well as the electronic kind that people like myself tend to play nowadays.

The article was actually commissioned by Games for Health community founded by the The Serious Games Initiative. I knew about the Serious Games group but hadn't heard of the Games for Health thing, however there are some interesting posts on their site so I will be gong back later to read through it properly later.