Mental health week and video games

Photo by Matthew Ball on Unsplash

It’s National Mental Health Awareness week in the UK.

And I think it’s important to acknowledge this kind of thing, and more so to promote it so that it gains traction.
​There are a variety of platforms in the UK, some of which are Mind and Samaritans. And I can say that there isn’t something like this in every country. Hell, in some countries, including the one where I’m coming from, people mock you and point at you if you’re feeling down, glum, burnt out, or a worse variation of that. I guess this is one of the differences between certain countries, especially those that are progressive and offer a better life to people.

But besides this, there are also a few games out there, especially in recent years, who delve into mental health stuff.
Before I forget is a game about dementia, trying to make you feel and see what someone with dementia feels.
Gris is a game that goes into the depths of depression and pulls out a whimsical story with music and colour that makes that kind of sadness seem charming. I played this when I was in nihilism, or rather trying to come out of it, and it was quite inspirational.
Celeste is more of a hero of a story game, however, you don’t defeat bosses to find a trinket or save a person, merely to overcome yourself, including your shadow, which I will talk about in another post.

I’m sure there are more games out there, yet these ones seeped through the vessels of time and landed on my iris.
And to conclude this, we live in a very comfortable world where some of the biggest hardships happen in our heads, for various unknown reasons, and that leads to more problems than one can imagine.
It’s more important to be open this than to mock someone that is opening up about it. Unless you want blood on your hands.

First appeared on my blog.