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Science Games

Playing Tetris Can Reduce Onset of PTSD After Trauma, Study Finds (cnn.com) 71

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.

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Playing Tetris Can Reduce Onset of PTSD After Trauma, Study Finds

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    I never get the long skinny piece when I need it! Tetris causes me PTSD!!

  • So, that explains the story of this Game Boy [traemcneely.com].
    • Flashback time... I bought a Gameboy for that very reason. I was being deployed for Desert Shield and the later Desert Storm. It held up the entire time and for years beyond until the game pad had issues. It was in and out of sand, rain (yes it rained over there once like crazy), and a lot of abuse. It doesn't surprise me it survived a bombing - that thing was built nice. I played Tetris a lot and as much as I could. Which for me was a lot because we were in a hurry up and wait state. If it did anyth

      • I got one at the same time, for the same reason... how the hell did you keep enough fresh batteries handy?

  • PTSD Cure Illegal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @01:50PM (#54136903) Homepage Journal

    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 [youtube.com], 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 [drugpolicy.org]).

    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.

    • by Altrag ( 195300 )

      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.

    • by Jhon ( 241832 )

      My daughter (age 14 now) suffers from PTSD. It's pretty severe. You can literally see her eyes dilate when she has a flashback. She's gone -- somewhere else. And when she comes back she's terrorized. Those little "trips down memory lane" have become shorter and the recovery time has become shorter as well but it's not gone or fully controlled yet. Also, silly things like startling her can send her in to a flashback or any type of mild anxiety completely unrelated to the original event.

      We've played the

    • by tomhath ( 637240 )
      TED talks are just one person's opinion, much like reading a blog.
  • by 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...)

    • by imidan ( 559239 )
      Freshman year of college, I played Tetris just about every night before bed. Then I would lie down and close my eyes, and there it would still be. I finally decided I had too much time on my hands and got a job.
    • by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

      I've had that effect from a number of games: a few hours of intense play with a simple screen will do it for me pretty easily. It can be exacerbated by other things, like lack of sleep, etc.

      Once in college I stayed up until 5 working on a paper. I had class at 8 and decided it wasn't worth going to bed, so I spent the remaining 3 hours playing Doom, and then to keep myself up between classes played more Doom during the breaks. Coming out of my last class of the day I ran into a friend who invited me to take

  • by Anonymous Coward

    For example, it's been known to make earthquake victims scream "Oh God, Oh God, the blocks, the blocks, they're all falling again! They'll never stop!"

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      earthquake victims scream "Oh God...the blocks, they're all falling again!

      Just have "reverse mode" where the blocks fall up. "Sirtet"?

  • We should send our troops into battle with headphones blasting the Tetris music! They will be unstoppable. Hell, Putin probably already does it.

  • After a stressful event, such as an accident, the victim or friends of victims could change his mind with some tetris game. Bonus idea: if you get an operation the doctor give you a couple free token for you after the surgery!
  • "Playing Tetris Linked to PTSD" ;)

  • which work as the "muscle rubs" do. the menthol in them distracts from the pain. yep. Tetris can be irritating.
  • Maybe just listening to the awesome Russian music from the Tetris soundtrack has the same therapeutic effect.

  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @02:36PM (#54137295) Journal
    To be sure, they should repeat the experiment using a control group that plays Bioshock.
  • So I hypothesize, so mote it be.

    • So I hypothesize, so mote it be.

      Yeah, I doubt it has to specifically be Tetris. However I don't think having the victims of a traumatic car crash play Grand Theft Auto would be wise...

      • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        It can be any game actually, even GTA. It works because with the vast majority of the population can tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction. A guy I worked with back in 2000 was one of the truck drivers who was involved in that massive 90 car pileup on the 401 between London and Tilburry. [wikipedia.org] His psychiatrist recommended games of any type, and specifically "comical" games of driving where the impossible was possible. He was back to driving trucks within a couple of years of that, before that he

  • I was in the company warehouse when an earthquake struck. The shelves collapsed and all the boxes tumbled down on me.

  • Having had mild PTSD for a while, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The phrase "1000 yard stare" makes much more sense when you've experienced it.

    Also "PTSD is associated with about a 53% increased risk for incident cardiovascular events over the course of eight to 10 years. And that’s on the order of about half a pack of cigarettes a day." - source http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08jbc1v

    • Interesting, but be careful about those heart attack type stats. Basically those who are on the verge of a heart attack only have it when heart rate is greatly increased. But if you just sit around for years and never exercise, the heart attack won't happen for a lot of those people. Doesn't mean exercise is bad for you though, it just means it's waiting for you.

  • I play Tetris after talking to my wife. It has helped.

  • There is no linked article in the summary, but I wonder if this study could be ethically flawed

    In order to be scientifically sound, they need a control group and an experimental group, the later being exposed to a trauma. Willingly inducing a trauma seems to be at odds with Hippocratic Oath's "to abstain from doing harm".

    • Yes, this is why you don't induce trauma, you find people who have been traumatized, and try adding 'play tetris' to the standard post-trauma procedures, and see what happens.

      And 'get them doing something to keep their mind off of it' has been standard advice for literally millennia.

  • In Capitalist west, detrimental action game changes you.
    In Russia nice game helps you.
  • To me it sounds a bit like the principle EMDR is based on.

    http://www.emdr.com/what-is-em... [emdr.com]

  • So basically it *blocks out* the bad stuff?

  • Here my layman's understanding of why this makes sense: A large part of what causes PTSD comes from being trapped and helpless while experiencing extreme fear; playing a simple game like Tetris makes you stop concentrating on the experience - it is complicated enough to require you to concentrate, but it is simple enough to make you feel in control. Other games of a similar level of complexity would probably work too, but tetris old old enough to be available almost universally. Finally, memories take a whi

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. -- Aldous Huxley

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