World Mental Health Day: a roundup of articles from the archive

This Monday was World Mental Health Day. Because of this, I wanted to take a moment to highlight some articles on the site that explore mental health and its relationship to games.

Raising awareness about the topic of mental health in general is something I am deeping passionate about, and I have lived with mental illnesses myself for some time now. I take a variety of regular medications to help with this, and, combined with cognitive behavioural therapy, these have worked well for me and my ongoing recovery.

While they aren’t designed to be therapeutic, games have often provided me with a safe refuge to escape to. This can often include jumping back into a title from my childhood and experiencing that unrivalled nostalgic joy once more (I will forever have a soft spot for The Italian Job on the PlayStation 2 for this very reason).

There have also been times when games have offered up something positive even when I am not the person actually doing the playing. Sometimes, I find a deep emotional connection to a game by watching streams. Our very own Ed Nightingale recently reduced me to tears (don’t worry, I mean the good, cathartic kind) during his playthrough of Celeste.

So, with all this in mind, here are some Eurogamer pieces from over the years that caught my attention, and which talk about the link between mental health and the world of video games.

Earlier this year, Caelyn Ellis took the time to tell us all about her love for RPGs such as Skyrim and Dark Souls. In this piece, she explains how these games provide her with an emotional outlet during hard times, and how they can even offer up some very welcome “meditative calm”.