Tetris used to prevent post-traumatic stress symptoms | University of Oxford
www.ox.ac.uk
A single dose psychological intervention, which includes using the computer game Tetris, can prevent the unpleasant, intrusive memories that develop in some people after suffering a traumatic event.
  • doublejay1999@lemmy.worldEnglish
    214·
    9 months ago

    This work perfectly for most of my lectures in Quantitative Methods in college.

    When it came to the exam, I couldn’t recall a thing.

  • paddirn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    129·
    9 months ago

    Can confirm, I’ve been playing tetris for three hours and I’ve almost completely forgotten about the dead hooker in my trunk.

  • Space Sloth@feddit.dk
    94·
    9 months ago

    My mum used to work with criminaly insane people in an asylym. I realize now why she frequently jacked my Gameboy to play Tetris.

    • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      27·
      9 months ago

      Can I ask what role she did? I read a book last year called ‘The Devil You Know - Tales of Forensic Psychiatry’. It was very illuminating and interesting, each chapter a different (anonymised) story of one of her patients. Especially her ‘bike lock’ theory of why some people can commit such horrific crimes.

        • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          48·
          9 months ago

          She posits that some people have a ‘combination lock’ which, when the right numbers all come up together, pushes them over the line into a horrific violent act.

          EG if someone was beaten by their father as a child, go through some trauma as an adult, are under a lot of stress, then some guy in the street who looks a lot like their dad used to starts screaming at him because he bumped into him, then BLAM they’re smashing his face in with a nearby brick before they understand what’s happening.

      • Space Sloth@feddit.dk
        2·
        9 months ago

        Uh, I think she was a handler, of sorts. Don’t rightfully know, I just know it was a job with a lot of risks and it was hella stressful. Her workplace had one “inmate” escape and murder a 9-year old one time and that was just, well devastating.

  • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
    63·
    9 months ago

    yo… everyone is laughing cause its kind of funny but I had a really intense and traumatic childhood… and I also played a lot of tetris as a kid. Like more than 12 hours a day of it.

    Is that seriously why my trauma didn’t effect me like it would have with other people??

    That’s fucking nuts. Like what.?.

  • eyy@lemm.ee
    58·
    9 months ago

    it’s a lie perpetuated by Big Tetris!!

    jk, good to know. I assume this should work similarly for any game that doesn’t contain violent content and yet activates the brain.

    • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      25·
      9 months ago

      I wonder if there’s any research on that? It’s been a while since I read the study but iirc there’s something specific about Tetris that increases the effect, something to do with manipulating objects to fit into neat rows.

      So maybe trying to fit the shopping in the back of a car would be as effective! Anyway I posted this hoping it would be of use to some of the people affected by the latest lemmy attack.

        • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          17·
          9 months ago

          Someone is uploading child porn to one instance, which then gets federated across other instances. I suspect it’s the same dude who, after being banned for trying to wreck the site by creating ridiculous amounts of communities, vowed to continue wrecking the site.

          Unfortunately it’s still ongoing, I saw something which I think was probably CSAM. Reported it immediately and the report wouldn’t go through so assume it was already removed, very quickly. There shouldn’t be any porn on sh.it.just.works (or however the instance is spelled) so if you see anything that looks pornographic on there, report it and don’t click on it unless you want to be scarred for life.

    • Damizel@lemm.eeEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      I would imagine crossword puzzles or anything similar in that nature could also apply.

    • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      Probably to some extent, but there’s a few aspects that probably make Tetris exceptional for this

      First, you have to pay attention and plan ahead, but in a simple enough way and fast enough that it discourages fully forming thoughts. You also can’t do it on autopilot - you can’t pattern match or rhythm your way through, so you can’t zone out. So while you’re playing, you probably can do very little to ruminate over the event and reinforce it

      Second, it’s spatial reasoning, working + short term memory, and very visual. We encode long term memories like carving groves into wood - the longer we think about it while it’s in short term memory, the clearer the details. If ASAP you overwrite the short term spatial and visual memories with meaningless combinations of blocks, you lose a lot of detail. That’s going to result in a much weaker association of the emotions to a location or an image, making triggers less likely and easier to break

      Third, it ties up your visual systems - as the primary sense of humans, visual processing is a huge portion of what our brains do. It’s tied up in complex ways with the way we predict things and access memories, and for reasons I barely understand that can be used to weaken triggers and dampen emotional response

      So putting it together, it distracts you from effectively building a narrative by putting your thoughts into language. While that’s going on, it overwrites aspects of your short term memory over and over with meaningless junk data. Finally, it’s just soothing - you get little hits of dopamine and jolts of stress response

  • AnthoNightShift@lemmy.ca
    48·
    9 months ago

    So you’re saying if my parents had let me play video games, my childhood traumas would have been easier to deal with. Those f%*&ers…

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
    42·
    9 months ago

    Also, just an anecdote, but good music and puzzle games seems to help those of us who had PTSD form.

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
      14·
      9 months ago

      For me, in my deepest depressive state, I found stupid movies to be a really good tool for managing my symptoms. My go-tos were Ocean’s 8 and Rampage.

      There was just something about pointless entertainment that occupied my time well without eliciting emotional responses. (ie, emotional responses I was incapable of regulating)

      • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        5·
        9 months ago

        That’s interesting, seems you use a similar strategy to me.

        I have bipolar, knowing I’m going to have extreme lows in the future even with meds can be very dispiriting, but I know that I’ll always have a giant weapon in my arsenal… comedy shows. The difficulty comes when there’s nothing to watch and I need a boost, only so many times you can rewatch The Office, It’s Always Sunny etc.

        (yes this was a thinly-veiled request for suggestions of funny!)

        • Komle@lemm.ee
          3·
          9 months ago

          Here come my suggestions, I find them funny and most have a feelgood undertone too: Parks and Recreation, My Name is Earl, Raising Hope (same writers as in my name is earl), Better off Ted, Schitts Creek, Chuck, Space Force, Brooklyn Nine-nine, Outsourced, Modern Family, The Middle, Community (the earlier seasons). Most of these are pretty well known I guess but I hope at least one of them is helpful!

          • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            2·
            9 months ago

            Better off Ted,

            Much appreciated! I’ve seen most of these but a few I don’t recognise so will check them out. Better Off Ted, imo, is so underrated and I never understood why it got cancelled. Made me laugh so much.

            • Komle@lemm.ee
              2·
              9 months ago

              Great! I hope you like them! I know, I’ve rarely heard anyone mention it and it’s just so good. The Veridian Dynamics™ voiceover bits especially are so funny, and poor Phil of course! I’ve been hoping someone might pick it up and keep going, but I’m guessing that’s probably too late now… Won’t stop hoping though!

  • havokdj@lemmy.world
    36·
    9 months ago

    Me after watching family get brutally murdered in front of my very eyes:

    hOlD uP gOtTa PlAy SoMe TeTrIs To PrEvEnT pTsD, mEnTaL hEaLtH aWaReNeSs BrO

    On another note, does playing amogus with the boys increase the chances of it becoming PTSD?

  • loopy@lemm.ee
    27·
    9 months ago

    I remember a podcast on NPR a few years ago mentioning something similar. The psychologist that was on the show was discussing how doing something that does something that requires your full attention reduces anxiety. It’s interesting to see that this can also be applied to reduce PTSD.

  • nucleative@lemmy.world
    25·
    9 months ago

    After reading this I thought there must be a nice and simple Tetris game in the play store. Boy was I wrong. I think some guy has a “block puzzle” empire and has just rereleased the same tetris clone game a hundred times. And official Tetris is a total abomination of unlocks and achievements.

    Bummer.