Friday 20 March 2020

D&D and Mental Health

Let's try talk in a sensitive and entirely non-judgmental way about something which I feel like is a bit of an elephant in the room: a lot of people involved in OSR blogging and self-publishing have (self-declared) mental health problems - much more so, I would say, than in the general population. I used to notice this a lot even back in the early days, and with a high level of frequency in the G+ era. I see it all over Twitter, too, on the occasions when I look at RPG related tweets.

I have my worries, like anybody, but I thankfully (to my knowledge) don't have any mental health problems particularly. (Although severe psychotic disorders and rare degenerative brain conditions both appear to run in the family, so this may not last forever.) But I am interested in why this apparent correlation between an interest in RPGs and mental health arises, partly because I'm just curious, as a disinterested lay person, in the ways in which the conditions of modern life appear to be producing a crisis of spirituality of a kind, and partly because I like D&D nerds and I want to know what makes them tick.

Maybe you have noticed something similar to what I have described. If so, do you think it is:

-A function of the fact that 'extremely online' people who spend large portions of time each day on the internet discussing anything are more likely to have mental health problems than average, and I'm just noticing the ones who happen to be discussing old school D&D?

-A function of the fact that D&D players, particularly those who are really into it, and so immersed in it indeed that they would discover OSR games, tend to be quite creative people, and creative people have a tendency towards neurosis, anxiety and depression?

-A function of the fact that this is a relatively small corner of the internet that has the feel of a community and which therefore has a comfortable atmosphere that encourages openness about these things?

-A function of D&D having some kind of therapeutic benefit, whether intended or otherwise?

-Something else?

Or do you disagree with the initial premise?

30 comments:

  1. My gut instinct says that role players, especially those willing to tweet and google+ and all that simply more willing to discuss their issues than the general population.

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    1. Which is weird, though, because stereotypically nerds are bad at stuff like that.

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    2. True, but you get an odd combination of both friendship and anonymity on the internet that I think works into people being freer with personal info.

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    3. Also the number of folks blogging, and posting, and whatever about gaming are typically more representative of DMs than players. DMing, being in total control of things, might be the key more than the blogging, posting, and whatever.

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  2. I've wondered the same thing. Speaking without any authority or knowledge, it might be partly all of your points. I've read that many people have various levels of various mental health conditions without ever realising it, particularly older generations. Some philosophers of language hold that you can't conceive of something you can't name. It may be that a community that happens to discuss these issues encourages members in the community to recognise behaviours etc in themselves and to seek out formal diagnosis/treatment. Maybe. It may also be that D&D players are more open to the idea of the self being something that can be seen from an outside perspective, given the mental gymnastics involved in creating PCs and inhabiting them.

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    1. On that last point, I have sometimes wondered if playing RPGs encourages empathy - but the way a lot of RPG enthusiasts act online makes me doubt it.

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    2. Today's Random Encounter1 April 2020 at 07:55

      RPGs are definitely a valuable tool for improving and exploring empathy. I've been involved with a lot of different communities (both under and outside of the 'geek' umbrella) and I'm continually impressed and reassured by the wonderful people gaming has brought me into contact with.

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  3. Of the points you listed:

    -I'd be skeptical that being extremely online is necessarily correlated with mental health conditions. I'd be more open to believing that the relative anonymity and separation of talking through a screen vs. talking in person may make people less concerned about hiding mental health conditions(thus causing an illusion of more people who spend significant amounts of time online having them), but I think socializing via technological means is more a function of circumstances, availability, and wider/more immediate feedback.

    -Is there evidence that creative people have a tendency towards those conditions? (Honest question; not an attempt at calling you out on the claim) Assuming so, I think RPGs in general would attract people interested in some form of creative expression and thus have a higher proportion of people with those conditions, and I would be inclined to agree that people for whom creative expression is important would be more likely to look at options beyond their first contact (which is likely to be mainline D&D, due to its market share and greater prevalence in media).

    -Feel of community on top of what I mentioned for the first point definitely seems likely to reduce the stigma of being open about mental health conditions.

    -I don't have any links handy at the moment, but while I don't know if there's been any clinical studies on the matter, I have seen more than one mental health treatment professional support using TTRPGs as therapeutic tools for much the same reasons as they can help shy or otherwise marginal people socialize more comfortably by being a low risk environment for trying things that would be scary or difficult to do for real.

    No other suggestions, though I do agree with Ruprecht's comment. As someone who's never been diagnosed but likely does suffer from some mild mental health conditions, I'm interested in seeing what others have to say.

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    1. I am fairly sure that high creativity is correlated with the 'neuroticism' and 'openness' big five personality traits - but that is something I am just vaguely remembering from 'A' level psychology, 20 years ago.

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    2. I think there is some evidence for this. Researchers often study creativity using small “multiple use” tasks, such as come up with as many used for a brick as possible, so I would look at occupational literature as more relevant to what I think this post concerns. Here is some empirical support:

      “Results found that the visual artists group scored higher on measures of positive-schizotypy, disorganized-schizotypy, asocial-schizotypy, neuroticism, openness and divergent thinking (uniqueness) than did the non-artist group and lower on agreeableness.”

      Burch, G. S. J., Pavelis, C., Hemsley, D. R., & Corr, P. J. (2006). Schizotypy and creativity in visual artists. British Journal of Psychology, 97(2), 177-190.

      ... “openness was more strongly related to performance in jobs with strong innovation/ creativity requirements” ...

      Judge, T. A., & Zapata, C. P. (2015). The person–situation debate revisited: Effect of situation strength and trait activation on the validity of the Big Five personality traits in predicting job performance. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), 1149-1179.

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    3. Thanks for the info. It made sense to me on an intuitive level, but I'm wary about making sweeping assumptions (particularly about mental health) without evidence, and the subject matter is too far beyond my areas of knowledge to trust I could interpret whatever I might dig up correctly.

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  4. I would say that the prevalence of self-declared mental illness among the online OSR RPG nerd crowd is primarily due to the “online” and “nerd” parts and less to the OSR or RPG parts. I see similar patterns in other “online” “nerd” communities. I’d chalk it up to a combination of online oversharing (dare I say attention seeking?) with nerdy neuroticism. Nerds are, pretty much by definition, neurotic. (Lest anyone think I’m being mean or not including myself in this generalization: I was a computer science undergrad at MIT; I know of what I speak.)

    The OSR “creative”/“iconoclastic” thing may have a kernel of truth to it as well, but I feel like that sort of gets rolled into “nerd”, if a nerd is someone whose interests are not constrained by what is considered normal or cool.

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    1. In summary, nerds are nerds. ;)

      Online oversharing/attention seeking is undoubtedly a thing that appears all over the internet, and yeah, it can become vicious when combined with lack of social awarness and nerdy neuroticism. A potent mixture.

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  5. I agree with your premise. Unfortunately, I have this personal flaw: I HATE any manifestation of self-pity. That said, I think that creativity and a non-standard mind often goes hand in hand. But then, creativity may be short-lived on something as limited a subject as D&D. Thus, an imploding community...

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    1. I also hate manifestations of self-pity and get incredibly judgmental about them, which I am trying to get better about.

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  6. If someone gathered the data and found your perception to be accurate, then I think those all seem like sound explanations. But my own personal experience disagrees with the initial premise a bit. That's not to say that I think it's rare for RPG bloggers to have mental health issues. If you made a list of every one in this community who has openly talked about it, it would be a long, long list. But I feel that would be true of EVERY community on the internet. That the RPG scene is just not really exceptional or disproportionate at all. The only thing I've perceived is a general trend towards normalizing and discussing mental health issues across ALL of society. In fact, I have seen other bloggers and content creators in every other hobby I have express a very similar sentiment and set of theories as you have here.

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    1. You could well be right. It's the only online community I am really involved with, so my perception must be skewed a bit.

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  7. I wrote out a long reply to this post and my computer ate it. Here's the short version:

    Hasbro D&D™ has a high barrier of entry. Fans of the 5th Edition are interested in official content, so only Hasbro and it’s promoters gain relevance in that scene. So there’s a high degree of professionalism and no mental illness, but all the content is corporate-friendly renfaire McFantasy sludge.

    The OSR has a low barrier of entry. If you can understand B/X, you can create OSR content. People into weird fantasy or who don't care for the Hasbro version of D&D can become prominent here. All sorts of neurotics, eccentrics, egoists, psychopaths, and otherwise mentally-troubled types can enter the scene as well. That’s not a bad thing; many of these people make content that’s far superior to anything Hasbro or Critical Role will ever produce.

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  8. This certainly isn't limited to OSR people. IIRC were was a mental health poll on rpg.net and about half of the people who answered said they had some form of mental health issue.

    I think you can find similar things with a lot of niche interests. Lots of activities that involve opting out of mainstream society in some way are going to have more people with mental health issues than the regular population. You can kind the same sort of thing with expats. I know here in Korea there are some deeply WEIRD people who show up because some people move to Korea as a way to opt out of their society at home, I'm sure you met similar people in Japan.

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    1. For sure - I do wonder whether since openly being into RPGs is still so frowned upon by polite society that there is a high bar to entry for non-weirdos. You have to accept being thought of as a nutter to even get through the door, so QED you will end up with a high proportion of nutters in the hobby.

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  9. You should have numbered your options, so it easier to reference. I bet it's mostly "'extremely online' people". Along with, for many mental illnessess, it is easier/more possible/less likely to break down to do blogs/online things whether because it's at your own pace/terms and less social pressure than say going to in person event. Or,
    cause online stuff has persistance and has higher survival chance when mental illness gets in the way. For instance my blog persists when I spend few weeks in bed, avoiding the world cause of depression. And when it's over, I can resume blog. no damage done. Not as true with (now) ex friends, other regular social commitments.

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    1. Those are good points. Which makes me wonder, if people had had blogs 100 years ago and hence the opportunity these matters to the same degree we do now, would it reveal they had similar levels of e.g. depression as us?

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  10. Elephant in the room? Now that you bring it up... It occurs to me that there is a fairly easy to identify demographic - socially networked, tending towards the far left, purple/blue hair, body jewelry - who wear these things as Internet status symbols. Meanwhile, it does not seem to affect the grognard types more than the social average (while they tend to have weight problems, heart disease, and the like). So something here is a bit off.

    Before Zak (PBUH) brought much-needed diversity into the OSR (I think this is the socially acceptable way of putting it), it was not really a thing here, while it was very much a thing on RPGNet, where the WW Drama Club used to congregate. You can look at the old-school forums and blogs of the pre-Zak era - crickets everywhere. Some people had psychiatric conditions they were trying to manage, and some people were shy, socially awkward, or had bad moods or trying times every now and then. Sometimes I am sad, and sometimes my life throws me plenty of lemons. And that's quite different from making a fashion statement of it, or treating a slightly awkward personality as a clinical condition.

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    1. I share those sentiments partly but I am also well aware that depression is real and can be completely debilitating. Young people readily take on labels like 'anxiety' and 'depression' cynically as ways to e.g. get out of doing exams in school and things like that, but I also think that there is something about modern 'extremely online' culture, especally among the young, which makes people depressed. And that's not to mention the all-too-real, can't-get-out-of-bed style depression that definitely exists and can strike at any time.

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    2. Speaking as a far-left, purple-hair type, I think that people in said group like to be seen as brave by their peers by being very open about their issues. It's not just about mental health- it can be things like sexuality, too. We also put a high value on being honest about your life, often to the point of oversharing.

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    3. There's certainly a component of how much one's social circumstances encourage or stifle being open about personal abnormalities, weaknesses, and other such issues. Focusing on that seems like it wouldn't go anywhere, though, as it's impossible to tell how many of the liberals (in a non-political sense) are self-diagnosing, exaggerating, and/or fabricating mental conditions for social reasons (status symbol, giving them a way to be special, defense against criticism, etc.), just as it's impossible to tell how many of the conservatives are repressing, ignoring, and/or hiding mental conditions for their own social reasons (avoiding stigma, feeling it's a sign of personal failure, etc.).

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  11. Part of it is also probably the expansion what people see as harm and illness. Haslam calls this concept creep:

    Haslam, N. (2016). Concept creep: Psychology's expanding concepts of harm and pathology. Psychological Inquiry, 27(1), 1-17.

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    1. I think this is a big piece of this that goes beyond the OSR/RPG nerd scene. The culture in general (especially among younger people) has really shifted in terms of defining mental illness and harm. People are much more willing to discuss and defend what 30yrs ago would have been understood differently by the majority culture. "Concept creep" indeed.

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  12. I think that mental problems no longer bear the same stigma that they once bore. It's acceptable to mention them, now that they are understood as genuine illness and not as moral shortcomings.

    That said, the gamers I've known over the years have been a mentally weird lot. At least two of them had psychotic breaks and became homeless.

    Still, when I was young, my friends and acquaintances were mostly gamers, so the view from my bygone youth is not a fair sample of society.

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