Question: @Nathan Do you think RPG games can help with certain psychological disorders?

Nathan Hook answered on 5 Nov 2018:

There isn’t really enough research to be certain. We also need to be careful to avoid ‘magical’ thinking that games can produce positive changes but not negative changes.

My view is certain games can teach a skill called ‘mindfulness’ – awareness of one’s own mental processes.

For example, when someone is depressed they tend to focus on all the negatives and worst possible outcomes and get more depressed, created a vicious cycle. The answer is to learn to be able to mentally step back, see you are in the cycle, and push your mind to break out of it. I do think that a carefully designed game could help teach people to make that mental step. I wrote a roleplay game called ‘Black Dog’ which has been in a school with teenagers in Denmark to do this. It doesn’t ‘treat’ the condition, but it prepares people to be better able to handle it.