Playing Tetris may prevent PTSD after traumatic event

Key takeaways:

• Current research shows that playing Tetris after a traumatic event may reduce incidences of intrusive memories.
• More research is needed to fully understand the impact of playing the game on PTSD development.

SAN FRANCISCO — Playing Tetris within 72 hours of a traumatic event may reduce the frequency of intrusive memories for up to 5 weeks, according to a poster presented here.

“It turns out that there’s been a really small amount of research into post-exposure prophylaxis for PTSD, because about 85% of individuals who are exposed to something that may cause PTSD never develop it,” Trevor Hawks, BS, a third-year medical student at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, told Healio at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting. “So, we don’t know who is going to [develop] it, and interventions like giving someone morphine or benzodiazepines to make them forget would be inappropriate to give to 100% of people. But [Tetris] is a really benign intervention.”

Hawks and colleagues reviewed the current literature on using Tetris to prevent PTSD to evaluate the effects of this intervention on outcomes after a traumatic event.

Among patients who visited the ED after experiencing a motor vehicle accident, those who played Tetris for 20 minutes reported fewer intrusive memories within 1 week compared with people who did not play Tetris, according to findings from a case-control randomized trial by Lalitha Iyadurai, ClinPsyD, DPhil, and colleagues.

Hawks and colleagues also identified a 2021 study by Marie Kanstrup, PhD, and colleagues, which built on the research done by Iyadurai and team. Their findings indicate that participants who played Tetris reported a mean of 3.52 fewer intrusive memories within the 1 week of ED admission compared with people who did not play Tetris (mean, 3.85 vs. mean, 7.37).

Based on this research, Tetris may pose a low-cost, low-risk solution to preventing PTSD among people who experience a traumatic event. However, more research with larger samples and longer follow-up is needed to confirm these findings, Hawks said.

References:

• Hawks T, et al. Efficacy of Tetris gameplay in reducing trauma-related intrusive mental imagery through post-exposure intervention: A review of current studies. Presented at: American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting; May 20-24, 2023; San Francisco.
• Iyadurai L, et al. Mol Psychiatry. 2017;doi:10.1038/mp.2017.23.
• Kanstrup M, et al. Transl Psychiatry. 2021;doi:10.1038/s41398-020-01124-6.