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Tetris shows promise in reducing PTSD symptoms
- lovegrenoble 2y agoWell, this Tetris is addictive... Tangram as well (for mind-benders): https://blocks.ovh https://blocks.ovh
- mdp2021 2y agoArticle says rotation is a crucial operation to the purpose.
- duskwuff 2y agoThe study hypothesizes that rotation is significant, but didn't specifically test that. I wouldn't be surprised if the effect were more general.
- REDS1736 2y agoThe hypothesis is that mental rotation as one way to induce high cognitive load hinders my brain from plaguing me with intrusions. As my sibling commenter already stated, this mechanism's evidence level is "unproven hypothesis" but on top of that, the hypothesis does not explicitly assume mental rotation to be the only effective task for this use case because there are a lot of other very brain-consuming tasks.
- amadeuspagel 2y agoReminds me of the shape rotator meme[1]. [1]: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wordcel-shape-rotator-mathcel https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wordcel-shape-rotator-mathcel
- afro88 2y agoDoes this effect last after they stop playing tetris, or just while they play? I know when I played tetris a lot, my brain seemed to be stuck on it in a way. I would close my eyes and almost see tetris shapes. I'd have dreams about it. And I would kind of see various problems through a tetris lens, so to speak. I wonder if that phenomenon is what is going on here. Your brain uses slightly different pathways that are tetris influenced and have lower risk of jumping into the PTSD paths. I wonder if that lasts after they stop playing and their brain reverts to non-tetris influenced ways of thinking.
- pcardoso 2y agoKind of related, the days when I pick weeds from my lawn I’ll see the weeds for hours when I close my eyes or even just flashes with my eyes open. I guess the weed picking activity stresses my pattern recognition and it continues working afterwards. Very trippy, at least for regular garden weeds.
- alexdong 2y agoThis is totally a thing. I think it also strengthens the neural pathway so that <speculation>when the next time you face the many options, the weight would be just slightly higher</>. (I am assuming human brain works similar to how neural net works. I can be wrong here. )
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- JansjoFromIkea 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
- jprete 2y ago"With just one guided treatment session, we saw positive effects that persisted after five weeks and even six months after treatment."
- cryptoz 2y agoThe only time I've ever lucid dreamed was when I played an obscene amount of tetris, and I could actually play games in my sleep. Like games that followed the rules, falling pieces randomy, I could rotate them, lines would disappear, the whole thing. It was really really wild.
- calvins 2y agoThe paper itself: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-024-03569-8 https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...
- the_gorilla 2y ago[flagged]
- EDEdDNEdDYFaN 2y agosomehow? curious what you consider to be real ptsd vs. what you consider the trauma that front line health care workers faced during one of the worst Healthcare crises of our lifetimes.
- mulmen 2y agoAre you actually curious to know the motivations of a troll?
- yawpitch 2y agoAre you seriously so abysmally bad at empathy that you’re unaware that doctors and nurses the world over watched millions of people die very often in agony, while forcible isolated from their loved ones, during the first year of Covid? Being forced by your job to watch someone suffocate is, definitionally, a real trauma that can easily cause very real PTSD. Going back in and watching that same story play out hundreds of times, especially in the early days before anyone had figured out effective treatments, would cause real PTSD in any human being with even an absolutely minimal capacity for empathy.
- the_gorilla 2y ago[flagged]
- petercooper 2y agoSome of what they're saying reminds me of EMDR therapy which is also used (with mixed success) to treat PTSD, and is briefly mentioned in the underlying paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_a...
- animal_spirits 2y agoThis was my first thought when I saw the title. Lots of rapid eye movement and stimulation alongside therapy might release some of the stored trauma.
- radlad 2y agoFrom your link: > There is debate about how the therapy works and whether it is more effective than other established treatments.[3][9] The eye movements have been criticized as having no scientific basis.[10] The founder promoted the therapy for the treatment of PTSD, and proponents employed untestable hypotheses to explain negative results in controlled studies.[11] EMDR has been characterized as a pseudoscientific purple hat therapy (i.e., only as effective as its underlying therapeutic methods without any contribution from its distinctive add-ons).[12] I always assumed EMDR's effectiveness had nothing to do with eye movements.
- REDS1736 2y agoI support your assumption. The mechanisms of how EDMR affects the PTSD symptoms are still debated, but indeed a quite prevalent opinion (which i also subscribe to) is that EMDR is not at all about the eye movements but about the exposition therapy happening concurrently. Exposition has been robustly proven to be effective at PTDS treatment and as far as i know, there is no rigorous evidence for EMDR having more effect than standalone exposition, highly suggesting that the exposition part is what makes EMDR work.
- petercooper 2y agoI'm only an educated reader, not a doctor, but I think the role of eye movements (or Tetris!) in these types of therapies is simply to consume the patient's full attention and brain power without being tiring or frustrating in the short term - those things just happen to be quite effective at it.
- brontitall 2y agoThis is a newer application of an existing approach https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2607539/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2607539/
- gurjeet 2y agoFrom the conclusion: > Playing “Tetris” after viewing traumatic material reduces unwanted, involuntary memory flashbacks to that traumatic film, leaving deliberate memory recall of the event intact.
- caseyy 2y agoVideo games are an excellent distraction to break up invasive thought patterns, too. There are several methods to use distractions that therapists tailor to their clients. This is part of why I work in the games industry, grandstanding as it may sound. Games have helped me deal with complex PTSD at a point in my life. It is important to do the other work and not just rely on distraction as forever. But distractions give you breathing room and some space away from invasive thoughts. The trauma can then begin to heal.
- bigfatfrock 2y agoThat's a highly compassionate reason to get into an industry, bravo. Is there a specific type of game you found healing, or especially one that you prefer to create for such a purpose? I personally strangely find a mix of 'brain turn off' games such as ARPGs healing but then can also find great peace in crushing my brain through another Factorio run.
- caseyy 2y agoThank you for your compliment. I think the type of game most healing is the type of game that gives you what you need — good emotions, wisdom, coming of age stories and role models, escapism, or a distraction. There is a lot in the medium that can be healing. As all art, games have a message and a purpose. What speaks to you is what will be most impactful.
- lnxg33k1 2y agoI have no PTSD, but I recently lost my job, and while I am looking for another one I decided to use the time off in order to stop smoking, so far it's been a bit more than 3 weeks, and I think it's been the period I've been playing the most videogames since high school, it is really useful to overcome temporary cravings by doing something that doesn't require much mental efforts but still keeps the mind busy to don't think about smoking, every day I am suffering less and less, and I think without videogames it would have been much harder. Keep in mind, I'm 37 years old and have smoked since I was 13
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- hanniabu 2y agoDon't most coping mechanisms? What's needed is to reduce it without reliance to continue doing it.
- AI_beffr 2y agothis is nonsense. people will believe this but not believe that being in ketosis cat put PTSD into remission. it has for many people including myself. that frustrates me so much
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoGuess the point of studies, is to prove something is or is-not non-sense. There are a lot of different treatments for PTSD, it doesn't have to be only one. So if ketosis works for some people, that doesn't mean video games can't work for others. So if it helps some, it isn't non-sense. I think Ketosis sounds interesting, I'd hope someone would do a study on that also. Since it seems like Ketosis has been shown to help a variety of conditions, even if PTSD wasn't singled out. Here is a positive one on Ketosis. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/04/keto-diet-mental-illness.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/04/keto-diet-men...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- BikeShuester 2y agoThere doesn't have to be a single silver bullet for PTSD. The beauty of science and medicine is that we can explore multiple avenues simultaneously. Ketosis has shown promise for some, including you, which is great. However, different people respond differently to treatments. Instead of pitting methods against each other, why not advocate for a more inclusive approach? Embracing multiple methods makes sense because PTSD is complex and affects individuals differently. The goal should be to find what works best for each individual, not to win a treatment popularity contest. Let's push for more research into all promising methods. That way, we can build a more comprehensive understanding of PTSD treatment options and hopefully help more people find relief.
- yawpitch 2y agoBelief is irrelevant, it’s what evidence exists for that matters. Any intervention for PTSD that has an evidentiary basis and consistent effect across multiple studies is good. There is a tiny bit of that building behind Tetris as an intervention for traumatic experiences, including evidence that it may help prevent conversion of traumatic experiences into post-traumatic mental illness; be glad for that because it means people in the future may not develop PTSD at all. By any measure that potential preventative effect is more important than treatments that only work (if they work at all) for people who already have developed it, so Tetris is getting some serious research study… good, nothing to be frustrated about here. If ketosis worked for you, great, but there’s little more than exactly that anecdotal evidence yet, it needs time and investigation too.
- tlhunter 2y agoI love how the banner image is of an unlicensed Tetris knockoff.
- Euphorbium 2y agoThe state shown in the image is not even from tetris game. Probably a shooting game.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- wannabeeez 2y agotry just about anything made by Nintendo (not just for Nintendo, but by Nintendo). strong focus on wellbeing... If Tetris isnt involving enough, you will find something. The nice thing about the good video games is that- unlike drugs and alcohol, the effects wear off faster and its easier to create a healthy rhythm for that reason. Disclaimer- it can be addictive and as bad as any- but Nintendo games are self-aware of this by design (usually). And some games are deliberately made to foster addiction, but generally not games made by Nintendo
- softwaredoug 2y agoMy reading of the research is quite a bit of positive impact of video game usage on mental health, and the negatives come up when they take away from healthy habits due to extreme use (exercise, socialization, education). And it’s hard to tell causality of the negative side (maybe video games are being used to cope with something terrible) https://www.charliehealth.com/post/video-games-and-mental-health https://www.charliehealth.com/post/video-games-and-mental-he...
- ktm5j 2y agoAs someone living with PTSD, distraction is absolutely the best tool for dealing with the effects. I'm lucky enough to have a career that does that job for me, I get really absorbed in what I'm working on and then I don't have to think about the awful things that happened to me.
- gurjeet 2y agohttps://tetris.com/play-tetris/ https://tetris.com/play-tetris/
- tslocum 2y agoMore HN-esque: ssh playnetris.com https://playnetris.com https://playnetris.com
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoThis answers a lot of questions for me. I was obsessed with Tetris from 2018-2021, specifically NES Tetris (because I grew up with it) to the point that my Max score on a NES CRT was 943252(1) on level 28, with DAS. Not long ago I got a C-PTSD diagnosis, oddly cause I was able to finally see the situation I used to be in, and that was during a hard decade which included 2019-2021 I got out of that situation and have played Tetris maybe twice in the past year. So yeah feels right (1) https://kemendo.com/tetris.jpg https://kemendo.com/tetris.jpg
- dudeinjapan 2y agoMy childhood is full of stressful memories of all these shapes falling, I can’t fit them into place fast enough, they begin to pile up, the Nutcracker music starts playing faster, soon I realize its hopeless, I hear a crashing sound and the screen blanks out. Some would even call it traumatic.
- Apocryphon 2y agoMDMA, eat your heart out
- dennis_moore 2y agoCould the conclusions generalize to other types of anxiety such as GAD or OCD?
- treebeard901 2y agoVariants like block puzzle are great as stress relievers and tend to be a better tetris implementation for a phone screen than having scrolling blocks.