Can video games help reduce symptoms of mental health conditions?

Could people with mental health conditions one day use video games to help manage their symptoms? It is a question that Tameem Antoniades, creative director of UK games developer Ninja Theory, and Paul Fletcher, a psychiatrist at the University of Cambridge, aim to answer as part of The Insight Project. The pair previously collaborated on Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, a video game that has won accolades for its portrayal of the experience of psychosis. As they developed the game, they wondered whether video games could also be used to measure and modify people's mental distress, and have now begun prototyping games based on biometric signals. "Instead of using a game controller, we are using your physiology," says Antoniades.