Games And Mental Health
Video games, movies, and the media have been portraying mental health the wrong way for many years. “We aren’t being encouraged to understand and empathize with mental illness, we’re being taught by pop culture to fear it.”(Lindsey) This point is further driven after the Texas church shooting where Donald Trump said that the shooting was a result of a mental health problem and not US gun laws. This is all people hear on the news which brings people to fear mental health. The shooter displayed many signs of having a mental health problem. For whatever the reason may be, he obviously did not get the help he needed. This could be partly because of the curing metal health has been portrayed through movies games and music videos.
Everyone has seen videos of electric shock treatment that was once used. This would put fear into anyone who was seeking help back then. The music video by Lil Boosie Mind of a Maniac where Lil Boosie is in a padded room with his arms tied behind his back with a bite collar on is frightening to someone like me who is very claustrophobic. The show Gotham has a place called Arkham Asylum where you see all the mentally ill criminals go. Dr. Strange the person running the Asylum made them into “freaks” as the show calls them where he would brain wash and give them powers to do evil. Games have creepy and bloody run down establishments that are used to represent the place where the horrifying mentally ill character is lurking around trying to kill you.
Newer games now have ways of putting mental health in a new light while also giving resources to people who might need help. The game There Are Monsters Under Your Bed is a game where mental illness is not used to create tension with others or create a certain environment but rather show players what it is like to have a mental illness. “The player finds herself locked alone in a room unable to escape as an incredibly apt metaphor for being trapped inside your head as a mental illness sufferer, unable to break out of destructive thought processes.”(Lindsey). Games like this can bring awareness of the difficulties that people suffering with a mental illness go through. This will help bring empathy more then fear.
Video games can also help fight depression. Researchers have found that video games improve parts of the brain that lack while depressed. “
These two regions of the brain, the reward pathways and the hippocampus, are the same two regions that get chronically understimulated, and that even shrink over time, when we’re clinically depressed.”(McGonigal). As long as players are not using the game to escape real life problems, which is an occurring problem today, playing video games can counter act depression. Concentrating on certain benefits that you get while playing the game will make the player feel like their time used playing is rewarding to their real lives.
Lindsey, Patrick. “Gaming’s Favorite Villain Is Mental Illness, and This Needs to Stop.”Polygon, Polygon, 21 July 2014, www.polygon.com/2014/7/21/5923095/mental-health-gaming-silent-hill.
McGonigal, Jane. “How Video Games Can Teach Your Brain to Fight Depression.”Slate Magazine, 9 Nov. 2015, www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/11/how_video_games_can_teach_your_brain_to_fight_depression.html.
