Blog Post #6
Kerry McGlynn
Blog Post #6
When thinking with respect to mental illness, initially I never would have had any thought about games playing any type of role in the topic. After reading Patrick Lindsey’s piece he explains on how one of the most destructive aspects of mental illness is that it is invisible. He then explains that it is often hard to detect someone who is suffering with mental illness because most of the time they suffer in silence behind close doors away from others around them. They feel like they cannot be open about this with friends and even family in fear that they may be misunderstood because it is often known as the least-understood health concerns. Recently people have tried to get the conversation rolling to get people to talk about the topic to better understand the issue. Video Games have played a big role lately in this effort to try to get the ball rolling. Although the games are trying to help the topic and get the topic into conversation they lack a few key components when talking about the topic. They lack empathy and understanding of the topic, which sometimes creates more harm than good. This is a sensitive topic in which you have to be careful in how your represent it. The games often represent the characters as damaged. They don’t humanize the character and often draw a line between “us and them.’’ It often refers to these people suffering as broken, or defective, compared to everyone who does not suffer. When you depict this in a character you are insinuating that the character is untrustworthy and don’t depict what things are really like. Until we depict these characters with the use of empathy they will remain “invisible” to the rest of us and the conversation will never reach its full potential in society. In class we played a game that well depicted the everyday struggles that someone battling mental heath often has to endure. It explained why you could end up digging yourself deeper in a hole when dealing with mental health. It had scenarios and decisions following in which could lead to a darker path when put in a situation whether to tell your loved one about the issue or to ignore the issue and further. Depending on how you respond depends on how your character copes or not with mental heath. This medium actually shows some empathy, which I think, helps the conversation rather than hurt.
According the psychologist Brian Sutton-Smith the opposite of play is depression not work. He observed “most people tend to experience stronger self-confidence, increased physical energy, and powerful positive emotions, like curiosity and excitement, during play. This is a perfect contrast to depression. People who are clinically depressed lack the physical energy to engage with ordinary everyday tasks. They’re overwhelmingly pessimistic, particularly about their own capabilities. And they experience a distinct absence of positive emotion.” If someone was to originally ask me what I thought was the inverse of play I would have definitely said work but now after reading this I would definitely side with the view of Sutton-Smith. He explains that when we play video game there are two regions in the brain that are hyperactive during the duration. One is associated with motivation and goal-orientation and the region associated with learning and memory. After hearing this I have quickly understood just how therapeutic video games could potentially be for those suffering with mental illness.
