Treatment Effects of Therapeutic Interventions for Gaming Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

The prevalence of gaming disorder (GD) is assumed to be between 2% - 5%. The treatment effect of different therapeutic interventions of GD has not been studied extensively. This systematic review and meta-analysis sought to identify all clinical GD-studies with a control group, determine the effect of the interventions and examine moderators. Clinical studies applying a form of therapeutic intervention on participants with GD using an appropriate comparison group was searched using electronic databases, previous reviews and reference lists. Data on type of treatment, name of outcome measurement, symptom level and other study characteristics was extracted and analysed using meta-analysis and meta-regression. A total of 38 studies, 76 effect sizes, and 9524 participants were included in this meta-analysis. RoB2 and ROBINS-I risk of bias tools were used to assess within-study bias. A correlational hierarchical (CHE) working model with robust variance estimation (RVE) of the overall effect on symptom level yielded a moderate to large summary estimate (g = 0.56, 95% CI [0.40, 0.71], p < .001, k = 37). Egger’s sandwich test, funnel plot inspections, and sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess risk of bias between studies. The results of this study indicate that there is an overall effect using a variety of therapeutic interventions on GD. However, the results are weakened by moderators, a probable small-study effect or publication bias, and a small number of studies. The field needs more higher quality studies for different therapeutic interventions.