Could an old puzzle of colorful bricks ease the weight of related nightmares? An international team of researchers has just shown that a protocol for digital processing
based on video games Tetris dramatically reduces some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Post-traumatic stress: treatments that are not easily accessible
According to the World Health Organization, approximately 70% of people will experience a major trauma, such as a serious injury, death or sexual assault. Although current treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are effective, they remain largely inaccessible. These therapies often require extensive consultations with specialists, making them unavailable and unsuitable for those dealing with persistent trauma.
Health professionals, frequently exposed to traumatic situations, have few therapeutic options, often due to a lack of availability. In the UK, the rate of PTSD among healthcare workers increased from 13% before the Covid-19 pandemic to 25% during its peak. This situation places additional pressure on health systems, as untreated post-traumatic stress reactions can lead to a deterioration in the mental health of caregivers, sometimes resulting in an inability to work or abandonment of the profession.
In this context, an innovative method was tested on 99 British caregivers affected by scenes of death and emergencies linked to Covid-19.
How Tetris became the heart of new digital processing
Designed at Uppsala University with teams from Oxford and Cambridge, the protocol called “Concurrent Imaging Task Intervention” (“Concurrent Imaging Task Intervention”)Imagery Competing Task Intervention – ICTI) targets a key symptom of PTSD: images that return without warning, traumatic flashbacks. The 99 caregivers were randomly divided into three groups: an ICTI group using Tetris via a secure web platform, a control group listening to Mozart music known for its therapeutic properties against stress and podcasts, and a group benefiting only from their usual care.
Initially, participants reported an average of ten intrusive memories per week. Four weeks later, those in the Tetris group reported only 0.5 on median, compared to 5 in each of the control groups, or approximately ten times fewer flashbacks. At six months, 70% of caregivers who received ICTI reported no longer having any intrusive memories. Other PTSD symptoms, anxiety, depression and sleep problems also significantly decreased.
Intrusive memories: what the Tetris method actually does on the brain
Intrusive memories are very vivid mental images of the trauma that “impose” themselves on the field of consciousness. The researchers start from the idea that if we disrupt this image when it is briefly reactivated, we can weaken it. Concretely, a session of digital processing by Tetris follows three steps:
- Very briefly recall a specific traumatic memory, without recounting it in detail;
- Learn “mental rotation”, that is, imagine a 2D or 3D object rotating in your head;
- play a slowed version of Tetris for around twenty minutes, focusing on the rotation of the pieces.
This work intensely mobilizes the visuo-spatial areas of the brain. The hypothesis is that this task competes with the traumatic image when it is “restored” in memory, which reduces its vividness, its emotional charge and, over time, the frequency of intrusions. By targeting only this central symptom, researchers observe a “domino effect” on all symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
Hope for caregivers, and tomorrow for other traumatized patients?
One of the major advantages of ICTI is its format: a single guided session of around an hour by videoconference with a non-psychiatrist “digital navigator”, then autonomous use on demand on a computer or smartphone. “These results are impressive for such an easy-to-use intervention. If we get such strong results in larger trials, the impact could be huge. It’s rare to see something so accessible, extensible and adaptable to different contexts. It does not ask patients to put their trauma into words and even overcomes language barriers“, said Tayla McCloud, head of digital mental health research at Wellcome, as cited by the University of Cambridge.
The authors remain cautious: the trial concerns a small group of 99 British caregivers, mainly white women, followed for only six months. They now want to test ICTI on more diverse populations and see if it can work without initial support.
Be careful, play alone Tetris after a shock does not replace specialized care; in the event of persistent flashbacks, the recommendation remains to consult a mental health professional, while waiting for these digital tools to be validated and possibly integrated into care pathways.