Posttraumatic stress disorder Flashbacks by computer game Tetris mitigate

Computer game Tetris can help with post-traumatic stress disorder

Researchers have discovered that playing the computer game can help Tetris Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) people to relieve involuntarily recurring visual memories of traumatic experiences. In addition, this reduces the number of so-called flashbacks.

Posttraumatic stress disorder after traumatic events

In addition to anxiety disorders and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can also occur when people have experienced terrible things, even if the dramatic experiences are weeks or months, sometimes even years ago. Affected then it always comes back to so-called flashbacks. To mitigate this, it can help to play the computer game Tetris. Researchers from Germany and Sweden have now found out.

Researchers have found that playing the computer game Tetris can help people with post-traumatic stress disorder. (Image: wstockstudio / fotolia.com)

There are too few therapy places

According to experts, recurring visual memories of the traumatic experiences are one of the most serious symptoms of PTSD.

"PTSD can be treated well with the available therapies", explains Prof. Dr. med. Henrik Kessler from the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy in the LWL-University Hospital of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in a communication.

"However, there are many more patients than treatment places," says the senior physician and trauma therapist.

Therefore, researchers are looking for methods outside of conventional treatments that can alleviate the symptoms.

Tetris can suppress flashbacks

About ten years ago, Prof. Dr. med. Emily Holmes of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden with colleagues outlines that the computer game Tetris can suppress horror-triggered flashbacks in healthy individuals when played shortly after viewing the film.

A research team headed by Prof. Dr. med. Kessler and his Bochum colleagues Aram Kehyayan have now joined forces with Prof. dr. Emily Holmes has also tested whether this effect can also help patients with PTSD who are often the source of stressful memories years ago.

Their findings, published in the journal "Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology," fuel hopes for a method that can alleviate the symptom of the flashback without therapists.

Special intervention completed

According to the study, 20 patients with complex PTSD participating in regular therapy for six to eight weeks at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy participated in the study.

In addition to the usual individual and group therapies, the study participants completed a special intervention.

They wrote down one of their incriminating memories, tore it up - without talking about the content - and then played Tetris on a tablet for 25 minutes.

The subjects always gave several different flashbacks, for example, experiences of violence in different situations, the occurrence of which recorded in a diary over the weeks in a diary.

For each week-to-week intervention, patients focused only on the content of a specific flashback.

Frequency of flashbacks went down

The researchers found that only the frequency of flashback, whose content was focused during the week, returned specifically in the days and weeks after the intervention.

The number of flashbacks remained relatively constant for the not yet focused flashback contents. Over the weeks, different Flashback contents were focused in succession, the frequency of which dropped in real time.

Overall, the number of flashbacks declined by an average of 64 percent for each focused situation.

Flashbacks, whose content was never focused, dropped by only 11 percent. The intervention was effective in 16 of the 20 patients tested.

Assumed underlying mechanisms

The scientists assume that the method's success is based on the following mechanism:

If patients get a detailed picture of the incriminating memory, this probably activates areas for spatial-figurative processing in the brain; comparable areas could also be significant for playing Tetris.

Both tasks require comparable and limited resources, it comes to interference.

Whenever a patient deliberately recalls the contents of a flashback, the associated memory trace becomes temporarily unstable.

If there is any interference during this time, the memory trace could be stored again with reduced attenuation, the researchers assume.

Trauma therapy can not be replaced

"In our study, the intervention was accompanied by a team member, but this did not take an active role and did not read the scripted traumatic memories," explains Kessler.

"Our hope is that we can derive a treatment that people could do on their own when there is no therapy space available," the expert said.

"The intervention, however, can not replace complex trauma therapy, but merely alleviates one central symptom, the flashbacks."

The researchers also point out that further scientific studies with control conditions and a significantly larger number of patients are needed to confirm the efficacy of the method.

The team led by Kessler and Kehyayan is currently conducting these studies. In addition, in basic studies, they further investigate the exact mechanisms of the effect in healthy people. (Ad)