DDRIG: The Impact of Video Games, Identity, and Narrative on Understandings of Mental Health

University Of California-San Francisco, San Francisco CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to understand how video games communicate mental health narratives. It will provide insight into how digital technologies and new media are re-defining knowledge about and experiences of mental health. This study will support health care professionals, players and scholars understanding of the relationship between technology and mental health. It will broaden mental health discussions to include new spaces structured by digital technology and storytelling. This dissertation research project aims to: (1) explore how mental health is represented and conveyed as meaningful within video games; (2) understand whether and how stories about mental health are taken up, received, and interpreted by those who engage with these games; and (3) articulate how narratives and storytelling may act as sites of power, inequality, and resistance within video game and mental health spaces. Using qualitative interviews and observations with people who play video games, in addition to critical analyses of video game texts, this study will examine how individuals’ understanding of and relationship to mental health shape and are shaped by video game narratives and experiences. This study will contribute to broadened understandings of how everyday interactions with digital technologies participate in knowledge production, specifically around health and mental health. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.