Just one guided digital therapy session, which includes the video game Tetris, can alleviate symptoms of this disorder that occurs after a traumatic event.
- To reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, Swedish researchers have come up with a treatment based on “mental rotation”, which is at the heart of the game Tetris.
- Patients who played Tetris saw their number of traumatic memories decrease from 15 to one flashback per week.
- In addition, six months after the guided digital therapy session, they had less severe symptoms than adults in the control group who had listened to the radio during the intervention.
In cases of post-traumatic stress, patients live with unpleasant and intrusive memories of a traumatic event, which often surface in daily life. In addition, they may suffer from excessive tension, difficulty sleeping and concentrating, or behavioral problems, such as avoidance. These different symptoms “lead to both subclinical and clinical distress,” according to researchers from Uppsala University (Sweden). That’s why they decided to find a way to reduce them and focus in particular on reducing, or even eliminating, traumatic flashbacks.
Post-traumatic stress: 144 patients played Tetris or listened to the radio
In a study published in the journal BMC Medicinethe team recruited 144 frontline healthcare workers during the Covid-19 outbreak who developed post-traumatic stress. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Half the group was asked to play Tetris with “mental rotation,” which is what the scientists’ treatment is based on. “When you look at an object from one angle, you can imagine what it would look like if it were rotated to a different position and could be viewed from a different angle,” they said. The other half of the volunteers, the control group, were asked to perform a non-visual task: listening to the radio. During this behavioral intervention, the adults monitored and recorded the frequency of their work-related traumatic memories at the start of the work and five weeks after the guided digital processing session.
Guided digital therapy session reduces number of flashbacks per week
At enrollment, patients had an average of 15 flashbacks per week. During the intervention, those in the control group had an average of five episodes per week, but those in the group that received a guided digital therapy session, which included the Tetris video game, had an average of only one. Another finding: Six months after the session, patients who used mental rotation had less severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Specifically, professionals who played Tetris had about half as many problems as the control group. “Adverse event data were acquired throughout the trial, demonstrating safety. Adherence was high,” can be read in the results.
“Trauma can affect anyone. If this effect can be achieved with an everyday tool like video games, it could be an accessible way to help many people,” said Emily Holmesprofessor who led the study.
