Leap 4: A Healthy Gamer
Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Alok Kanojia, known commonly as “Dr.K”, spends his free days helping those on the internet deal with struggles and spreading mental health awareness. Now an instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr.K reaches out to the masses with his 578,000 follows on Twitch, a livestreaming platform centered around video gaming, and foundation of the Healthy Gamer Foundation. Dr.K’s ability to spread awareness on mental healthy arose from his successful online interactions with other Twitch influencers and his seemingly relatable character.
As a gifted first generation Indian immigrant, Dr.K’s intelligence quickly became his shortcoming. Avoiding difficult subjects, sleeping through exams, resulted in 2.0 GPA and 120 rejections from medical school. Playing video games became a coping mechanism until Dr.K found enlightenment studying at monasteries in India and led to his return to medical school(LeBoeuf, 2021).
The rapid growth of the video game industry has led to the rise of multiple video game platforms, one of is Twitch. This videogame streaming platform, purchased by Amazon in 2014, with more than 15 million daily active users, reaches a major demographic of young adults as “over 66% of the US population plays games” (Gorenko, 2019).
Recognizing the potential of Twitch and relatability to the audience considering his own background, Dr.K started on his mission to bring awareness and help those young adults that also play games to cope or may not go out to seek help. Starting in 2019, Dr.K’s popularity exploded when conducting emotional interviews with major Twitch influencers reaching over 74,000 concurrent viewers and establishing a community around mental health awareness and healing (TwitchTracker).
Nowadays, Dr.K successfully utilizes many forms of social media including Twitch, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit to spread mental health awareness and promote his company and foundation dedicated to providing content, coaching and community resources to help young adults restore their mental health and lives (Liao, 2020).
Works Cited:
Gorenko, Y. (2019, July 1). How Twitch Influencers can help brands grow. CloutBoost. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://www.cloutboost.com/blog/the-influence-of-twitch-ninja-is-listed-on-time-top-100
LeBoeuf, S. (2021, June 25). From the monastery to multiplayer games: How healthy gamer is helping the internet generation. About Verizon. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://www.verizon.com/about/news/set-healthy-video-game-boundaries-healthy-gamer
Liao, S. (2020, August 5). A Harvard-trained psychiatrist is on twitch helping gamers with their mental health. CNN. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/05/tech/dr-k-healthy-gamer-gg-twitch-wellness/index.html
HealthyGamer_GG — Streamer Overview & STATS. TwitchTracker. (2021). Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://twitchtracker.com/healthygamer_gg
