Beyond Entertainment: The role of Gaming in Mental Resilience

What is the positive power of play? And how can we use it to support our mental health?

TECHNOLOGY

CULTURE

1 MIN READ

DATE

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

AUTHOR

World of Us

The World of Us Info editorial team comprises a global network of creative minds, makers, writers and industry experts. The team strives to research with enquiry and openness at its core, while constantly searching for opportunities to exchange knowledge and expand as a community.

What if there was a way that the world of gaming could positively enhance our access to and experiences of the digital space? Revered game developer Mike Wilson and former medtech executive Ryan Douglas are the minds behind Deepwell. The pair have found through combining their multi-industry expertise with extensive research into things like gaming versus medication, or the impact of games on PTSD and psychological therapy outcomes that this could become a not-so-distant reality.

This is a new concept of therapeutic gaming, or “medicinalisation” as coined by Ryan Douglas during the Games for Change talk on mental health and gaming in August. Douglas expressed the complexities of designing a new sector in the gaming industry founded in therapeutic research and made solely for the gamified therapy market. He also shared just how diverse, accessible and powerful therapeutic gaming could be for mental health around the world. This process of “finding the fun” while ensuring the therapeutic tools remain at the core of these new gaming concepts is explored in detail during the Games for Change talk.

Check it out here!

...