A scientific study from back in 2002 is making the rounds online of late, reminding people of all the evidence already out there that online gaming can reduce people’s levels of stress and possibly elevate mood as well.

The name of the study is: “Stress and selective attention: The interplay of mood, cortisol levels, and emotional information processing.” Sounds pretty dry, right? So why does it have the whole online gaming world abuzz? Because it appears to prove that online gaming can lower stress.

The study, conducted by researchers at McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and published in 2002 in the journal “Psychophysiology” found that playing online games reduced participants’ levels of the stress hormone Cortisol by about 17 percent, on average, presumably by promoting relaxation, despite the perceived “stress” of the game being played.

In questioning the subject, researchers found nearly three-quarters of them agreed that online casino gaming is a way to have fun and lower stress.

Later studies, such as a more recent one conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) Center for Mental Health and Media, verify these findings, showing that online gaming can help relieve work-related stress and tension.

Other studies backing these findings include one from Eastern Carolina University that found not only stress-lowering but mood-elevating responses to online gaming, and a study at Oxford University that found online gaming possibly beneficial for patients suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A UC Berkley paper called CalmMeNow: Exploratory Research and Design of Stress Mitigating Mobile Devices found “great potential for stress relief” in social gaming.