New PTSD Cure: Tetris
from the where-have-all-the-gameboys-gone dept
A newly published study from Oxford University suggests that Tetris is a useful tool for treating post-traumatic stress disorder. The study doesn't seem wholly comprehensive, but the basic idea is that the game engages the mind in such a way that it's essentially too busy working out where to put the pieces to have flashbacks. The key is that the game requires "visuospatial cognitive tasks" that preclude the mind's ability to generate mental images, so it's not necessarily Tetris itself that's the treatment, but rather it and other games that engage the mind in the same way -- so we'll go out on a limb and say first-person shooters and other games probably wouldn't be ideal. The author of the Guardian post raises a good question, though: what happens when you turn people hobbled by PTSD into people hobble by Tetris addictions?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I like it!
Sometime ago I was about to go on a cruise. I had had some trouble with seasickness before, and I didn't really want to take drugs. I remembered that playing some 3D computer games gave me some vertigo after awhile, so I reasoned that I could train for this. I played the game for about a half-hour at a time on and off for a couple weeks leading up to the trip, and gradually had an easier time.
On the cruise, usually the ride was very smooth, but during windier weather, you could see people turning kind of green at mealtime. But my stomach was always fine! Unfortunately, one of our friends wasn't doing so well, so we carried her to her room. If only she had played shoot-em-up games!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
One advantage...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
i discovered this a long time ago
i play it on my phone, all the time. nothing's more existentially soothing than an empty mind, a sore thumb, and a game that can't ever be won.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: i discovered this a long time ago
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
i got bored of tetris last year, but i cruise the flash game sites in the puzzle section for all sorts of little bits and pieces.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Quite so. They probably aren't ideal for this particular study because it used scenes of violence to generate the trauma, but they are used in other studies to stimulate the spatial sense.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I actually have ptsd
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
and then some
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Timing
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Timing
"Hold up, I have to play Tetris."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
My rant on the subject
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004153
http://www. guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jan/07/tetris-trauma-cure
I call bad science on this one, and do so from the perspective of having used Tetris in a similar manner. This study wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't foresee it resulting in a winnowing of the military's too-small mental health budget, replacing therapists with dummy terminals.
So, here's the thing. They tested the subjects by having them view "a 12-min film of traumatic scenes of injury and death." The test subjects who followed this by playing Tetris had fewer flashbacks to the violent images than those who just sat quietly.
Now, I have long used stimulating distraction as a response to distress. When I was a kid, reading a book could calm me down and distract me. Tetris was one of the first computer games I played, and I would use it deliberately, in the same way, if I was upset and getting into an obsessive loop about it. It DOES work - to an extent. If you can concentrate on getting into it, your mind clears and all that's left is Tetris. Afterward, I could get to sleep...albeit with tiny little shapes endlessly falling in a pattern all night long.
However, and this is a big however, it didn't clear the event from my mind, or lessen the upset when it was recalled. In the event of a trigger, the pain and anger were just as fresh. And keep in mind that this is upset over a fight with a friend or boyfriend, or an injustice, not actual Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I'll grant you I was an overemotionally young adult, but I would still never presume to compare my trauma to that of people who've experienced real and devastating trauma.
Next think about the fact that viewing video of "traumatic scenes of injury and death" is nothing like being involved in or personally affected by "traumatic scenes of injury and death" or even by a fight with a friend. I can thoroughly enjoy a violent movie like "Shoot 'Em Up," or I can be saddened at video of real life devastation. Watching a comrade, or even enemy, having their head actually blown off is entirely different.
Then, of course, there's the concept of triggers. You don't actually experience a film in the same way you do an event in real life. If, after a "Tetris session," anything reminded me of the recent distress, it all came back again. But I was never triggered to recall a particularly bad game of Tetris. PTSD triggers are similar, on a larger scale.
In conclusion, I posit that it's true that Tetris is, somewhat literally, mind-numbing. But I think this experiment and its conclusion dangerously oversimplify.
End rant
[ link to this | view in chronology ]