This article started off as a book review, but that will come later. I have been listening to Audio books for a few years now, ranging from military thrillers to intellectual thrillers, recently I have gotten into the world of LitRPGs. This line of books takes the idea of games like Dungeons and Dragons and Skyrim and uses them as a model to show character progression, most of the books I’ve read are very simple, player enters world, player gets put into crazy situation player succeeds crazy situation. But my most recent book series “Alpha World” has take a step further that none of the other series have even touched on. That is the mental health of the players. While the book can be a little unbelievable that all of the characters who this focuses on just happen to meet each other, and that all of them emotionally damaged to some degree.

I will not give away spoilers in this article, but I will say that one character was sexually abused, one was physically abused and one is repressing memories and his mind forcibly altered some of his memories.  The main character was suffering some severe mental disorders and the game he is in implemented a program that made him and the others he is associated with confront their memories and lead to potentially fixing the mental issues presented by the characters.

With that premise I got the idea and started researching video games being used to help those with traumatic pasts, this is being researched and being used effectively. It started with helping to treat schizophrenia and helping regain motor functions. Now there are games such as SPARX are being used to treat depression. Role playing games are being used to treat people with depression and a host of other mental disorders.

As we all know virtual reality is slowly moving forward, with the first major device being the Nintendo Virtual boy and companies attempting gimmicks to simulate virtual reality, but in the last few years we have seen a massive leap forward in virtual reality, devices that cover the eyes completely with earphones that allow sight and sound to be fully immersed within the game. But the player still needs to control the character they are playing as with a game device or one of the many devices that allow the player walk in place and control the character’s hands with specialized gloves.

While these are great, the player is still susceptible to fatigue, strain from the gear and other complications. The books that I have been reading have full dive systems that connect to the brain, remove motor function and allow the person to have all five senses fully immersed within the game world. With this connection the player’s brain is connected to the system allowing the computer to help treat them for their mental health more effectively than talking too another person such as a psychiatrist.

All of this excites me, I personally suffer from a small range of mental disorders from my term in the military, I have met others with much more severe cases, people with extremely traumatic backgrounds involving physical and mental abuse and even those who were born with other mental disorders. A system or game in the future that could potentially treat battlefield mental injuries, mental disorders from traumatic experiences could be revolutionary in the field of psychology. While this is still a fantasy, I would love to see something like this happen in our world because every day we hear and see article posted about how mental health is out of control in the United States, more and more people are playing video games and this could be a solution that could one day become affordable and could treat millions without the direct intervention of psychologists. While laws and regulations will be needed to keep a persons medical information secure and only released when the player authorizes it.