Rumination Room: A serious game to deal with disturbing thoughts

Abstract

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.