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Games As A Therapeutic Tool For Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

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In our modern era, about 91% of adolescents between the ages of 2-17 play video games. This includes games as minute as a sudoku handheld device, to something as sizeable as an Xbox or PlayStation. From mobile apps to computer games, video games have outwardly become part of our everyday lifestyle. The video game industry is a rapid-growing market that went from having a volume of $100 million in 1985 to $4 billion in 1990. (Gartner, 2013) As these games snowball in size, you can't just help but reflect on the impact these games might do to your children. Thus far, some people argue that these superficially harmless games can actually be more harmful than meets the eye. Furthermore, most arguments against video games dance around the fact that …show more content…

In that compact screen of yours could lie a vast land of the unknown or even a small puzzle. Inside, you're a hero of heroes. A conqueror of empires. Yet despite that, most of us wouldn't associate video games with therapeutic uses. People who connect with video games on a daily basis interact in the innumerable number of virtual worlds, which, result in emotional and intellectual connections that could even be therapeutic in the hands of a professional. A study done in 2015 investigated videogames as a therapeutic tool for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in clients with bulimia nervosa and found that clients with CBT, coupled with serious videogame had less dropouts, more partial remission and total remission than the CBT control group that had no video games. (Fernando, 2015) Therapist currently use art, movie clips, and educational books as therapeutic tools but, integrating the right genres of videogames as therapeutic tools in live sessions seem like a logical step. As many therapists and counselors are constantly working towards improving themselves and their practice, perhaps it's time to use video games as a method to help empower clients to …show more content…

Whether or not they get bullied at school, or even at work, most people can find their haven online in the numerous chat rooms online where you can find people who share similar interests. People come online to escape their outside torment. They're intelligent and imaginative but don't have many friends at school. (Young, 2008) The easiest part is that you can just log onto about any site or online video game and you're all set up to talk. However, some say that video games can take away from normal social development. You can get a 21-year-old with the emotional intelligence of a 12-year-old. He's never learned how to talk to girls. (Bakker, 2008) Nevertheless, video games is like a food addition. You must learn to live with food. (Young, 2008) Showing someone that they have an addiction is the most difficult part considering no one has ever been put in jail under the influence of video games. The key is to show gamers that they are impotent to their addiction and put these habits into moderation by showing them real life excitement versus online

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The concept of gaming overdose includes the subconscious desire to always be playing specific games that reflect one’s view of the world. Although these addictions can be suppressed and eradicated, the process of “narrative therapy” comes to mind when treating patients with this addiction in Joseph M. Graham Jr’s journal article entitled Narrative Therapy for Treating Video Game Addiction. This treatment involves many stages of narrative which firmly describe the process of recognizing one’s problem, acting upon it, and to finally be able to differentiate the real from the virtual. In the case of Sammy in this article, the narrative therapy helped him realize that the problem was not his assumption that he was an “addict”, but that he simply lacked control (Graham 706). This lack of control was therefore seen as a positive act rather than an addiction as the word “addiction” created a barrier between the reality of a person’s conscious and the virtual world of someone that does not know better.

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