Video games are an effective treatment for those at risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a new academic study.
An experiment by scientists in the United Kingdom and Sweden found that playing a “visually demanding” game immediately after a serious accident helped reduce the chances of long-term mental health problems.
Non-critically injured car crash victims recovering in a UK hospital were asked to play Tetris on a Nintendo DS for 20 minutes while they waited for formal treatment.
The study, published in the journal Molecular Psychology, found that playing the video-game reduced the prevalence of traumatic flashbacks in the days that followed – a major symptom of PTSD.
Professor Emily Holmes, a neuroscientist in Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet, led the study.
She said her theory was that the game distracts patients from remembering the accident they had just been in.
This, she said, disrupts a process known as memory consolidation, and stops traumatic flashbacks from forming later.
The study was carried out on 71 patients admitted to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
Half were given Tetris to play and the other half were asked to carry out a writing exercise instead.
Tetris players experienced “significantly fewer” intrusive memories in the week which followed compared to those who did the writing exercise.
One patient said the game helped stave off his recurring memory of smashing into a tree and hearing the sound of the air bag in his car being activated.
He is quoted in the study as saying: “I think that playing Tetris helped focus my mind and bring some ‘normality’ back to my head. I didn’t dwell on the accident too much while I was in hospital. Playing Tetris seemed a bit strange at the time, but looking back it has been a help. Thank you.”
When the trial period had ended, a woman in her 60s who had never used a handheld console before asked to keep playing for longer.
The academics behind the study said their findings are the beginnings of a case for rolling out video games in hospital waiting rooms on a larger scale – as a “therapeutic vaccine” to mental trauma before it fully forms.