Tetris and PTSD talk is hype, blog world needs to calm down

I've stayed out of the push for Tetris for one simple reason. How they did the study. Read the bold part of this and see what I mean. Do they really think a movie is the same as reality? Let them take the game out to police officers in the street right after they had to kill someone in a gun battle and one of their own was killed as well. Try the game on them. Take it to Afghanistan and Iraq right after a road side bomb blew up some GI's, killing some and taking off a few limbs at the same time a lot of innocent civilians got killed in the process, including children. Let them play the game and see how well they do with it.

The problem about the blog world jumping all over a story like this, as they have over the last few days, is it offers false hope. The study is not that great to be all over the blog world. Simple as that. The only reason I'm posting this story is because of the headline on this one.

Tetris Cures PTSD

William Weir stated that as if it is a fact from a proven study in the field or far reaching as if it's worked on tens of thousands of people. With millions in this country with PTSD, you'd think they could have used a few hundred thousand of them to try it out at least. To come out with a headline like this when we have a nation in pain with the new veterans joining the older veterans plus their families desperate for hope and help, this is irresponsible. I can just picture thousands of veterans rushing to find this game believing they will be "cured" miraculously by playing this game. My thoughts on this are, wait and see if they come up with a study that proves it works in the field on real people facing real trauma and not some people watching a movie.

I know what it's like to have nightmares and flashbacks from second hand by reading what I have to read and seeing pictures I have to look at. Considering I do this everyday it does get to me but I can assure you, as much as it bothers me, it does not come even close to after it happens in real time, real life. Playing computer games does help with the stress level I have. I like to play Chicken Invaders but all that does is help the stress and lets me chill out for a while. Curing PTSD, nope, sorry, the DOD and the VA have a lot better games they are offering in studies and so far, they're still working on them.

Tetris Cures PTSD
Hartford Courant - United States
By William Weir on January 7, 2009 5:09 PM
If you play Tetris, the old-school video game, within six hours after a potentially traumatic event, you might be able to prevent "sensory-perceptual, visuospatial mental images" (the kind that cause flashbacks) from ever forming in your brain.

So say researchers at Oxford, who claim that certain activities can use up the brain's limited resources that would otherwise be used for brain functions that lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.

For the study, subjects were shown a violent 10-minute movie. One group played Tetris shortly after, another group didn't. Over the next few days, the Tetris players reported fewer flashbacks to the movie.
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