Playing Tetris Can Reduce Onset of PTSD After Trauma, Study Finds (cnn.com)

Reader dryriver writes (slightly edited and condensed): CNN, citing a new study, reports that playing Tetris within hours of a traumatic event can reduce the onset of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: After experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, such as a car accident, people are likely to develop anxiety or distress in relation to that event soon after the experience, leading to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But a new study has shown that playing the computer game Tetris within hours of experiencing trauma can prevent those feelings from taking over your mind.
PTSD occurs when intrusive memories linked to fear from a traumatic event become consolidated in a person's mind by them visualizing the event in a loop until it becomes locked in their brain. Competing with the visualization, such as with a game like Tetris, can block that consolidation form happening. "An intrusive memory is a visual memory of a traumatic event," said Emily Holmes, Professor of Psychology at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, whose team led the study. "Tetris also requires imagination and vision. Your brain can't do two things at once, so this interrupts," she added.

Comments

PTSD Cure Illegal

[bill_mcgonigle]

Not to diminish the importance of blocking memory formation (nice research), but most people do not care about those who suffer from PTSD.

We have a known cure for PTSD, combination MDMA psychotherapy, but it's currently illegal in most of the world because both the US FDA and DEA political hacks claim that no medical uses exist for the chemical (despite the DEA Court finding otherwise).

It's a clear case of government vs. science and the loser in the battle is the vulnerable population of patients with PTSD (and the rest of society by extension). Sadly, most of society supports those politicians over both science and the needs of the afflicted.

Re:PTSD Cure Illegal

[Altrag]

1) People do care. That's why the research exists in the first place (though of course like other mental disorders, there's a lot of misinformation and stupidity out there eg telling depressed people to "just be happy" or alcoholics to "just stop drinking" as if they'd never thought to try that.)

2) Even if MDMA psychotherapy works and was made legal, prevention is always better than curing after the fact.

3) I'm pretty sure Tetris has fewer side effects than chemical interventions of pretty much any sort.

Holy Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a paper on this a while back, I'm surprised to see it revisited.

Fun fact, I once played so much tetris, I used to day-dream falling blocks and had to stop. (A form PSTD from tetris of tetris if you will...)

Re:Makes my mind go

[ProzacPatient]

For me it actually causes PTSD and I often randomly go into a trance because of a flashback of seeing blocks falling everywhere. I can't even sleep without seeing falling blocks. You had to be there to understand, man!

Link to the Paper

[InfectedPacket]

For those who'd like a link to the paper: Preventing intrusive memories after trauma via a brief intervention involving Tetris computer game play in the emergency department: a proof-of-concept randomized controlled trial

Re:Link to the Paper

[Verdatum]

Thank you. So this expands on a 2009 study including one of the same authors (Holmes) that preliminarily concluded the same thing back in 2009 (ref).

ethics ethics

[phantomfive]

To be sure, they should repeat the experiment using a control group that plays Bioshock.

Re:Makes my mind go

[OrangeTide]

What you describe is not called PTSD, it is Game transfer phenomena (GTP) or Tetris Syndrome. It happens to a lot of people and for many different kinds of games. Hypnagogic imagery such as seeing pixel artifacts, sliding movements, flashing or strobing are quite common. People can even feel sensations like moving, spinning or falling in combination with hallucinations.

Feel free to chalk this up to video games being more like LSD than we are willing to admit. :-)