The way a child plays is the way they live: how therapists are utilizing video games to help kids who are in trouble

Gamebro.biz.id - Minecraft and other creative games are becoming known as great ways to express yourself and help your mental health, even for traumatized Ukrainian refugees.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine started when Oleksii Sukhorukov's son was 12.  The family lived in a condition of anguish and chaos for months. Sukhorukov had to quit his job in the entertainment sector, which involved virtual reality and video games. They were cut off from friends and family.  But in the middle of all the craziness, his son had one way to escape: Minecraft.  He would escape by playing Mojang's block-building video game, no matter what was going on outside.

Sukhorukov recalls, "After February 24, 2022, I started to see the game in a whole new way."  I found out that Ukrainian kids were playing together online. Some of them lived in areas of the country controlled by the government that were regularly hit by missiles, while others were already exiles.  But they could still play together, help each other, and make their own universe.  Isn't it cool?  "I wanted to know more about how video games can be helpful."

Sukhorukov had already earned a degree in psychology, but he decided to go back to the field, intending to apply his skills in gaming and other immersive forms of entertainment.  He is sucker Scottish moderation at bindingsCHICIll Russo- Scottish Psychological Associations of Ukraine robesal.  In 2023, he started HealGame Ukraine, a project to look into how video games might help with mental health and emotional well-being.  He explains, "Right now, we are working with Donetsk National Technical University to make a Minecraft server that will connect Ukrainian kids who feel very alone because of the war."  Psychologists and social workers will be in charge of the server.  We're also working on Minecraft projects for kids with particular educational requirements.

Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and Virginia Axline were the first to use play as a key part of child therapy almost a century ago.  But the idea of employing video games has been getting more popular since the early 2010s, thanks to a group of young professionals who grew up playing games themselves.  Mike Langlois, a therapist and ardent gamer from Massachusetts, authored Reset: Video Games & Psychotherapy in 2011. The book is for therapists who want to learn more about gaming culture and how it affects kids and teens.  UK-based counselor Ellie Finch, who grew up playing Mega Drive games, became interested in this. She started thinking about utilizing games in therapy in 2012 after she started playing Minecraft with her nieces.  She had heard of people in the US who supported video game therapy, such Langlois and Jessica Stone. She looked into the idea of creating a pilot project in a London school that used Minecraft as a therapy tool.  Then the pandemic came.

Finch adds, "I was working in a face-to-face counseling service for young people, and then we all had to switch to working online."  "I quickly saw that counseling kids and teens over video chats had a lot of problems, and I discovered that a lot of them were playing video games.  I began to ask them about games, what kinds they enjoyed, what they got out of playing, and what avatars or characters they liked to play.  All of this helped me get to know these young people better and showed them that I cared about their lives.  I could instantly understand how being in the game with them would help.

There are several reasons why Minecraft has been very helpful.  A lot of kids know and like it because it's one of the most popular games in the world, with more than 200 million players.  It also has an open, very creative structure. Players can do whatever they want in the game's blocky landscapes. They can gather materials and build houses, explore, and fight zombies. Their choices, goals, and actions in the game all give important psychological and emotional information.

Finch makes an online Minecraft world that only she and the child or young person she is working with can get to.  The client gets to choose the rules. Some people just want to play in creative mode, where there are no enemies, and others want a completely flat, empty field.  Finch adds, "I often start the first session by asking my clients to make a safe place in their world."  "This could be a house, a castle, an observatory under the sea, a tree house, or something else."  In that first session, I learn a lot about a customer by what they make and how they make it.

There are several ways that therapists can use games.  The session could be non-directive, which means that the therapist just follows the client around to get to know them better and uses their therapeutic talents to figure out what's going on.  Finch adds, "This feels like going on an adventure in Minecraft."  There are various things the client could do, including explore a cave, swim underwater, fight dangerous mobs together, play hide and seek, or create a complicated machine.  It can tell me a lot about how they might be feeling and what's going on in their life.

Therapists can also provide their clients activities that have a therapeutic or educational goal. This is called "directive therapy."  Sukhorukov and Ukrainian child psychologist Anna Shulha, along with the non-profit group Malteser Werke, recently sponsored a quest activity called WonderWorld for Ukrainian immigrants living in Germany who were between the ages of 11 and 13.  The kids often felt alone and traumatized by having to leave their homes.  Sukhorukov and Shulha constructed up online Minecraft servers throughout a number of sessions, each with a stated goal that affected the actual world.  around one game, players had to find envelopes with photographs of Minecraft commodities like wheat, eggs, and buckets concealed around their dorms or a local park. Then they could go back to Minecraft and utilize these shared items to make cakes and other things.

Sukhorukov explains, "At the end of each session, we asked the kids to think about what good feelings or emotions had come up for them during the game."  "It's really interesting to see what kids make and how they make it."  Is it something brilliant and open, or is it something that is concealed deep underground?  How do they get around in the gaming world?  What do they do when someone gets lost or needs help?  Anna Shulha, a coworker of mine, says, "The way a child plays is the way they live."

Finch agrees with this idea that playing video games may be a way to communicate, like drawing or creating with Lego.  She says, "Children have shown me what it feels like to be scared and stuck by taking me into a cave."  They made trampolines out of slime blocks to have fun.  Teenagers have used the game to learn what it's like to be away from a trusted adult by leaving me, their therapist, in their "safe place" while they walk off on their own.  In 2024, she worked with the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education on a project called "Bridging the ChASM: Creating Accessible Services using Minecraft" to show how games can be used as a creative way to help people.

More and more therapists are using video games in diverse ways.  When I ask Sukhorukov for examples of people who have had an impact, he starts a long list: "Dr. Robert Rice came up with a way to turn a child's physical world into a video game, and their mission is to beat the problem."  Then there's Luke Blackwood, who made Legend Land, a Minecraft-based treatment realm that helps autistic kids who live in remote areas of Australia.  Catherine Knibbs is doing important work to help us learn about the digital world, cybertrauma, and what really happens to kids when they play games.

Not only Minecraft is being used; Fortnite, Roblox, and Animal Crossing are also.  No matter what the game is, therapy has had to keep up with how our kids' lives are becoming more and more virtual.  Stone explains, "For digital natives, people who grew up in a world full of technology, digital play is just play."  "They don't use platforms, programs, and devices as a replacement for something else; they use them as a main way to connect and be creative."  The basics of psychotherapy don't go away in these spaces; they get stronger.  If the client wants to play Minecraft, I've learnt more in a 30-minute session than I could have in weeks of regular talk-based meetings.

Finch is now thinking about using video game therapy with adults as well as kids and teens.  She knows that there are already grownups who have played video games for a long time and might benefit from this kind of therapy. For example, "I have had couples come to me for counseling who already play Minecraft together and have seen how it helped them relax and talk to each other."

Sukhorukov thinks that there is more to the bond between Ukrainian kids and Minecraft than meets the eye. The benefits of therapy spread to the whole country.  He continues, "If you search for 'Мaйнкрафт Україна' on YouTube in Ukrainian, you'll find videos made by Ukrainian kids and teens in Minecraft about war, captivity, torture, and occupation."  "Some of them have parents or loved ones in the military or who are prisoners."  Some people have family and friends who live in areas that are occupied.  People's ties to each other have been broken.  The war has harmed every single youngster in Ukraine.

"And there's something else that can be hard to understand: the hometowns of thousands of Ukrainian kids Volnovakha, Sievierodonetsk, Soledar, Mar'inka, and Bakhmut now only exist in Minecraft.  Kids can't write long pieces on it.  They can't talk at the UN.  But they really need to talk about death, pain, fear, and injustice.  "Play is the language of a child."

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