How computer games can treat ADHD and PTSD by rewiring your brain and allowing safe role-play

Playing computer games can be good for your mental health. That’s one of the messages of the Games for Change Festival, an annual event that focuses on how games – and now virtual reality and augmented reality – can be designed and used for positive outcomes in health, education and civics. The 15th edition of the festival, run by the non-profit Games for Change organisation, took place in New York from June 28 to 30, attracting more than 1,100 attendees to hear 150 speakers.

In a wide-ranging interview ahead of the event, Games for Change president and festival director Susanna Pollack told the Post that games can be designed to benefit mental health in two main ways. The act of gameplay can affect the neural circuitry of the brain in positive ways, and games can also be used to relieve stress by allowing users to role-play traumatic situations in a safe environment.

“Game mechanics are designed to drive engagement – people have a special attraction to games due to their ability to immerse the player in an environment and a story,” she says. “Researchers have found that games can change cognitive development – that games can improve cognitive neurological transmissions.”

Game environments can also be designed to develop empathy and coping skills in young people who are experiencing situations like bullying. “In a game, users are able to role-play such situations without fear.”

A neuroscience and health programme at the festival explored how gameplay affects brain function, and a Brain Jam pairs neuroscientists with game developers to foster collaboration between the two disciplines.

“Certain types of game experiences cause changes to occur in the brain,” Pollack says. “For instance, Dr Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist who works at University of California San Francisco, is studying how specific forms of gameplay can help to treat people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

He has been running trials for two years, and has a game at the US Food and Drug Administration for approval.

Gazzaley and his team have been looking at how patterns of gameplay that focus on maintaining attention and eliminating distraction can change the way the brain is wired in the long term. That is potentially a permanent way of rewiring the brain to stop someone suffering from ADHD. The change results from the actions players take, and the repetitive behaviour involved.”