Schizophrenia patients calmed by video game
Person with this condition are trained to control the section of their brain that deals with verbal hallucinations by the use of video games but in particular one in which they are able to control a space rocket.
A small study was conducted in which a small sample of patients were used, the video game was linked to their human and speech region of their brain.
King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, States that this can be used to help treat patients who do not respond to medication.
The 12 patients experience nasty and threatening verbal hallucinations on a day to day basis.
To attempt to control these symptoms, they were asked to play a video game while in an MRI scanner, using their own mental strategies to move a computerised rocket, in doing so they were able to quiet the external voices in their head.
Although there are no other similar experiments, there are a lot of similar theories to do with not only this condition but other similar mental illnesses.
This highlights the issue of mental illnesses as well as the way the people that have them are perceived, and that although society is advanced we are not yet advanced to the point of curing or properly assisting persons with these illnesses, or not willing to spend the money or time on these issues.
However, promising it is that patients are being calmed by video games, some question still remain such as; how effective is it long term? What would cost and funding be if found successfully linked? What would it mean for he video game industry? Etc.
Many see this as possibly life changing for a lot of patients and their families as this could allow severe patients to be home amongst family than in hospital, isolated.
The source is BBC News, this news group is seen as generally unbiased, and their views on the matter seem neither here nor there.
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