The Game Boy is a more powerful anti-anxiety drug than, well, an anti-anxiety drug, according to a new medical study conducted in New Jersey. I was all ready to mock the crap out of this study, with jokes about games that put you to sleep and the intelligence of doctors from New Jersey, but this just floored me. The charts show that the Game Boy is actually a more effective tool for relieving pre-anesthetic anxiety than midazolam, a powerful drug used specifically for that purpose.

In the world of medicine, of course, the Game Boy can t hold a candle to the next-gen handheld consoles. The DS doesn t just sedate the patient, it actually performs the surgery with salad tongs while dressed as a gorilla. And the PSP will do a fantastic consult and promise plastic surgery, then keep rescheduling because it s overbooked itself.

Game Boy better than drugs [Associated Press]

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