- HEALTH BENEFITS OF TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES HOW TO
- HEALTH BENEFITS OF TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES FULL
- HEALTH BENEFITS OF TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES PROFESSIONAL
This can be translated to adults as well, but then metaphors can more commonly replace playful imagination. Through their imagination, children develop their thinking by exploring lines, thoughts, ideas, and their own selves. The fiction itself, and its effects, have some parallels to the benefits of symbolic play. Tabletop roleplaying games are highly psychological in the way that participants accept and embrace fictional identities, fictional goals, and fictional realities. One possible reason for the limited research is that tabletop roleplaying is a niche hobby that still is not widely spread, and more research has been put into aspects such as social psychology than direct treatment. The amount of research that delves into therapeutic applications of tabletop roleplaying games are limited and for that reason we also looked at other research related to fantasy and roleplaying games. While this is much more structured and intentional than ordinary symbolic play, the roleplaying activity has parallels with symbolic play in the way imagination is an important fact that contributes to real development. These games allow people to, through their own imagination, become heroes, villains, or just someone else. People who play these types of games often do so in order to explore their imaginations and share stories, or they do so to picture a different world with different possibilities. These characters have their own strengths, weaknesses, and traits which are often represented by numerical values that affect the outcome of the dice rolls used to establish whether various actions in the game are successful.
The participants in these games create a shared narrative where the GM is the director who presents a number of fictional situations within an overarching narrative, and the players portray characters who become their avatars within this narrative. By using different forms of play therapies, a therapist can aid children in their development through symbolic play (which has proven effective especially for children with ASD).Ī tabletop roleplaying game is a game where a participant pretends to be someone else, but unlike a child’s imaginative play, these games follow an established structure and are presented through conversation and random chance, such as through dice rolls.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES HOW TO
Through symbolic play, imagination becomes a tool that helps children better face the real world, such as through improved language comprehension and understanding of how to act in different situations. This is a vital aspect of children’s development and refers to when they use objects, actions, and ideas in order to represent other objects, actions, and ideas. Before discussing therapeutic roleplaying in more detail, it is important to also mention symbolic play. Fantasy and imagination are something that can be used as a tool to support, empower, and guide people towards cognitive, social, and emotional development. There is much to indicate that tabletop roleplaying games can be used as a form of play therapy in mental health treatment as well as in treatment of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Some conditions can affect an individual’s mental well-being in different ways. On the other hand, a poor mental health can encompass anything from mild to serious forms of anxiety and depression as well as complex psychiatric conditions. In this blog post I will summarize in English some of the most important points from the study.Ī good mental health is vital for our ability to function as well as our general well-being.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES FULL
The study itself is in Swedish and can be found in full HERE.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES PROFESSIONAL
We interviewed six professional practitioners with experience using tabletop roleplaying games therapeutically, and we compared the results previous research that we could find on the subject. Throughout spring of 2020, I, as well as a study partner, wrote a bachelor’s dissertation in social work that focuses on the use of tabletop roleplaying games in therapeutic treatment of individuals with mental illness and autism spectrum disorder.
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