Rumination Room: A serious game to deal with disturbing thoughts

Rumination is a psychological process that is
featured by a repetitive pattern of intrusive thoughts that, by
focusing the person into painful cognitive contents, elicits
suffering. Usually people try to deal with these ruminative
thoughts by trying to avoid thinking, which paradoxically makes
the thoughts even more intense. Several researchers proposed
that ruminative thoughts are central in anxiety and depressive
disorders and that the treatment of rumination is also pivotal in
the treatment of these disorders. This study is a first attempt to
construct a game that trains players in shifting the attention from
ruminative thoughts to problem-solving tasks, illustrating the use
of the game. We expect that training such an ability will reduce
the intensity of that thoughts. It is our expectation that the
continuous use of games with these kind of features will reduce
the intensity of ruminative thoughts, improving the wellbeing and
reducing the psychological suffering of players.
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion