Exploring the Use of Gaming as a Therapeutic Tool
While we tend to think of gaming as just entertainment, research shows strategic games of all kinds have significant mental health benefits. When facilitated effectively, tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs), board games, card games, and even activities like escape rooms and scavenger hunts can build social skills, self-esteem, emotional regulation, and more. In this blog, we’ll analyze different gaming formats that show promise as part of a comprehensive therapeutic approach (see Geek Therapy).
Tabletop RPGs in Therapy
Dungeons and Dragons represents the most well-known tabletop RPG (though many similar formats exist). These games center around collaborative storytelling and problem-solving. Research indicates when facilitated appropriately with vulnerable populations, RPGs can help build social competence, cooperative skills, math abilities, communication skills, and self-confidence. Crafting persona backstories promotes self-discovery while group storytelling builds community.
Board Games & Therapeutic Goals
Classic board games like Monopoly, Scrabble, and Clue, as well as new ones like Ticket to Ride and Azul require a mix of skill, strategy, and chance. Playing these games therapeutically can encourage healthy social interactions, skill building, and discussing emotional responses to both positive and negative game outcomes. Research also shows board games works on cognitive skills like planning, organizing, goal setting, flexible thinking, and processing speed. They can focus both short-term and sustained attention for those with deficits.
Card Games & Interpersonal Learning
Therapeutic card games leverage relationships as they center around nonverbal communication and trusting one’s teammates. Trick-based games like Hearts or Spades require reading facial expressions and social gestures. Matching games works on visual pattern recognition and memory. Rummy and poker help emotional regulation as players learn to manage excitement and cope with disappointment. Group card games teach perspectives taking as participants develop empathy towards both partners and competitors.
Immersive and real-world environment games
Both scavenger hunts and escape room experiences present opportunity for creativity. For example, therapists could design scavenger hunts throughout treatment facilities demanding teamwork and communication amongst group members in seeking clues reflecting tools or concepts of their recovery journey so far. Finding each hidden “piece of armor” for their continuing quest towards health can represent an analogue for internal tools built through counseling while fostering collaborative support and problem-solving skills simultaneously via the game format. Similarly, custom in-office escape rooms could use multi-sensory environmental clues centering metaphorically on the “trapped” feelings underpinning a diagnosed condition like anxiety. Working together to decode these sensory puzzle representations of the prison of irrational cortisol could provide an immersive experience unpacking mental health obstacles as surmountable through collective effort and courage. The themes are only as limited as a provider’s imagination.
This overview explores just a sampling of games-based counseling techniques mental health providers might consider bringing into sessions. As the domains gaming impacts are complex, individualized facilitation is key to promoting psychosocial growth through play.
