Psychiatrists Use Games in Therapy

Forget the adverse effect which is said to be generated from the game. A psychiatrist indicated that the game could be useful in therapy being operated.

This was done by a psychiatrist named Dr. Atilla Ceranoglu T, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School. Ceranoglu, as quoted from GamePolitics, Thursday (27/05/2010), using the game to get closer to the patient.

In the sessions, Ceranoglu will invite patients who are still teenagers or children to play games together. These activities helped him connect better with patients and also see the cognitive abilities as well as investigating the child's feelings.

In one case, Ceranoglu managed to uncover feelings of his patients aged 14 years after doing some gaming sessions. He invites the child to play the game Lord of the Rings, a baseball game and a football game.

From these sessions Ceranoglu eventually discovered that the child's lonely and misses her brother who had died. Previously, the child's parents did not even mention if they ever have another boy who had died.

What games are suitable for the process of therapy? Ceranoglu recommend a short game, can be repeated, has many levels, easy to learn and display a variety of avatars. He is also looking for games that match the conflicts experienced by the child and may add content from the user.

To the parents of his patients, Ceranoglu said it had explained in advance what the role of games in a therapy session. This is so that the parents did not protest and considered them to pay a psychiatrist just to play games.