Using Games to Heal a Traumatic Brain Injury

Sufferers of concussion and traumatic brain injury (TBI) may find themselves unable to look at a screen of any sort after their injury. In our hyper-wired world of smartphone users and hardcore gamers, this side effect can be just as depressing as the TBI diagnosis.

Video game developer Jane McGonigal was struggling with the TBI she endured after hitting her head and developing a concussion that didn’t heal properly. Traditional therapies weren’t working to eliminate her nonstop headaches, vertigo, nausea, and memory loss. She was bedridden and, tragically, suicidal after being told to rest her brain from the things that triggered her symptoms, like reading, writing, video games, email, work, running, alcohol, caffeine, the list goes on. Instead of allowing herself to succumb to her misery, McGonigal created a way to push through the pain by designing a game as her cure.

Letting the Game Take Over

Games are scientifically proven to help people tackle challenges with greater creativity, determination, and optimism. McGonigal wanted to translate these gamer traits into her real-life challenge. She created the role-playing recovery game Jane the Concussion Slayer. She asked her identical twin to play the game with her which, as McGonigal explains in the transcript of her TED Talk, was an easier way of reaching out and asking for help.

McGonigal’s husband became her second ally in the game and together the three of them identified and battled McGonigal’s “bad guys,” which could be anything that triggered her symptoms (like bright lights) and slowed down the healing process. They also collected “power-ups” – things McGonigal could do on even her worst days to feel a little bit better or productive, like cuddling her dogs or walking around the block even one time.

These simple moves helped McGonigal. “That fog of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle,” she said in her Ted Talk. Even though she still had symptoms and pain, the suffering dwindled – she had something to live for.

TBI Rehab for Gamers

Eventually this game of adopting a secret identity, recruiting allies, battling bad guys, and activating power-ups turned into the game SuperBetter, and it has since become a browser-based platform that anyone, with any type of injury or ailment, can be empowered to create to help themselves heal. People are facing challenges like cancer, chronic pain, depression, and even ALS and becoming stronger and braver and feeling better understood by friends and family.

Most of all, they’re feeling happier, even though they’re in pain and fighting the battle of their lives. They select a nickname, build their own headquarters or laboratory, select villains to fight, enlist allies to play with them, and choose tasks to accomplish in order to have an “Epic Win.” Interactive footnotes within the game explain why it’s so important to healing to have allies, for example.

There are health benefits to playing video games and video game-based therapy for soldiers with TBI, children’s toys for rehabilitation from TBI, and recommendations that TBI sufferers take up Sudoku, Tetris, Lumosity, card games, puzzles, and memory exercises. Games, in short, are good for TBI recovery.

McGonigal was a little baffled by how what she calls her “trivial” game could make such an impact in serious circumstances, but through her research she learned that some people get stronger and happier after a traumatic event, experiencing what scientists calls post-traumatic growth. “We can use [a traumatic event] as a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives,” she said.

Read the transcript of McGonigal’s TED Talk to learn more about the four kinds of resilience that contribute to post-traumatic growth and the scientifically validated activities that can be done every day to build up your physical, mental, emotional, and social resilience – to achieve the stamina, willpower, happiness, and strength to earn you 10 extra years of life.

Author Bio: David Christensen is an experienced personal injury attorney with Christensen Law in Southfield, Michigan. Christensen Law specializes in helping victims with traumatic brain injuries.

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