Research Paper Title

Insomnia, Sleepiness, Anxiety and Depression Among Different Types of Gamers in African Countries.

Background

Gaming has increasingly become a part of life in Africa. Currently, no data on gaming disorders or their association with mental disorders exist for African countries.

This study for the first time investigated:

1. The prevalence of insomnia, excessive daytime sleepiness, anxiety and depression among African gamers;
2. The association between these conditions and gamer types (i.e. non-problematic, engaged, problematic and addicted); and
3. The predictive power of socioeconomic markers (education, age, income, marital status, employment status) on these conditions.

Methods

10,566 people from 2 low- (Rwanda, Gabon), 6 lower-middle (Cameroon, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Ivory Coast) and 1 upper-middle income countries (South Africa) completed online questionnaires containing validated measures on insomnia, sleepiness, anxiety, depression and gaming addiction.

Results

Results showed the sample of gamers (24 ± 2.8 yrs; 88.64% Male), 30% were addicted, 30% were problematic, 8% were engaged and 32% were non-problematic.

Gaming significantly contributed to 86.9% of the variance in insomnia, 82.7% of the variance in daytime sleepiness and 82.3% of the variance in anxiety [p < 0.001].

Conclusions

This study establishes the prevalence of gaming, mood and sleep disorders, in a large African sample.

The results corroborate previous studies, reporting problematic and addicted gamers show poorer health outcomes compared with non-problematic gamers.

Reference

Sosso, F.A.E, Kuss, D.J., Vandelanotte, C., Jasso-Medrano, J.L., Husain, M.E., Curcio, G., Papadopoulos, D., Aseem, A., Bhati, P., Lopez-Rosales, F., Becerra, J.R., D’Aurizio, G., Mansouri, H., Khoury, T., Campbell, M. & Toth, A.J. (2020) Insomnia, Sleepiness, Anxiety and Depression Among Different Types of Gamers in African Countries. Scientific Reports. 10(1):1937. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-58462-0.