Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can be experienced by everybody. After a traumatic event, people can develop distress and anxiety. This can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. A new study shows that there might be a way of preventing PTSD.
Tetris And The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
This research shows that the game Tetris can help people prevent PTSD. If people play Tetris in the first few hours after the stressful event, they are less likely to develop anxiety. PTDS is caused by intrusive memories from the event that consolidate in a person’s mind.
A game of Tetris can help people remove the intrusive memories from their mind. This study was conducted by Swedish researchers from Krolinska Insitute. The leader of the study, Emily Holmes, mentioned that Tetris needs vision and imagination. Since our brain can do 2 things at the same time, it interrupts the memories from the event.
This “treatment” showed efficiency only before the appearance of the post-traumatic stress disorder appeared. People who already have this problem can’t treat it with this game. The researchers mentioned that, in order to be efficient, the game needs to be played in the first hours after the traumatic event.
The Effectiveness Of The “Treatment”
Scientists tested this game on 70 patients that were involved in motor accidents. All of them were in a UK emergency room seeking care. Half of these people received a psychological intervention in the first 6 hours after the accident. The other half received the standard care.
The people who received the psychological intervention were asked to play the game while they recalled the traumatic event. After that, the patients were tracked for a week to see if they had flashbacks or memories from the event.
Those who played the game mentioned that they had 62% fewer flashbacks over the week. After this research, scientists believe that post-traumatic stress disorder can be prevented if people receive treatment early on. This is the first study that involves a computer game as a preventive method for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Despite the fact that this research showed potential, scientists mentioned that they need to make more tests before they can confirm that Tetris can prevent post-traumatic stress disorder. One limitation of the study is that it was based on so few participants.
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