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Exploring The Relationship Between Mental Health and Heroism in Video Games – IGN SOUTH EAST ASIA


Mental health and wellness have become more widely accepted in all facets of society, with more and more pieces of media portraying the different sides to mental health issues and its toll on all kinds of people.

Video games are no different in this revolution, with indie games in particular approaching this subject matter delicately, through personal stories and more lax ways of play. Games like The Sun Shines Over Us, Gris, and Limbo offer a great introspection to all kinds of psychological ailments and how one would deal with them.

Now when it comes to bigger, non-indie titles, we can see that a similar embrace of mental health-based storytelling have also taken place, albeit with a much bigger emphasis on varied gameplay and its portrayal of heroes and villains.

This shift from traditional heroism to more varied protagonists set in the forefront has given us more relatable characters and imaginative ways to explore mental health in a video game setting. Let’s take a look at how a more open approach to mental health has given us many relatable heroes in all sorts of genres.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Ninja Theory’s tale of Norse warrior Senua and her journey across the hellish world of Helheim is a brilliant study on psychosis and its effects on warriors who live a life of constant battle. As much as physical battles affect Senua, it is the battle raging inside her that forms the crux of this adventure.

This tale of coping with loss and overcoming it is relatable, even if it is set in an ancient world based on Norse and Celtic mythology. Senua’s journey of resurrecting her dead lover also recalls the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, with the message of accepting the death of loved ones reverberating all the same.

One of the greatest things that Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice does is recontextualising how ancient civilizations would have perceived mental disorders, with perceptions of such disorders seen as curses in that era. Ninja Theory brilliantly saw that many of these illnesses have been treated to stigma, which lead to the misrepresentation of such illnesses for centuries.

Overall, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice lets players experience one’s personal struggle with mental health challenges, showing us that while heroes like Senua can easily fight her way out of things, it is the journey of healing that one must undergo being of utmost importance. Hopefully, the sequel will show us the next major step in Senua’s healing.

Psychonauts 2

Speaking of sequels, Tim Schafer’s long-awaited sequel to his cult classic platformer is finally out in 2021. The original was filled with many opportunities for main character Raz to really get to the root of the issues that was plaguing his heroes, the titular Psychonauts.

The sequel gets us back to saving the world, one mind at a time. Only this time, Raz gets to meet the true masterminds behind the Psychonauts. Left broken and defeated by a psychic menace known as Maligula, Psychonauts 2 shows us the long term effects of mental health on a group of aging heroes.

While we do explore some of Raz’s own personal issues, it is his influence on his friends and family that are important in the growth and development of a community’s social mental health. Seeing an aging group of heroes experiencing post-traumatic stress, anxieties, and the splitting of one’s personality is refreshing to say the least.

There’s also the psychic worlds that Raz travels to and the monsters that awaits him, each representing a different form of psychosis, with different monsters like Panic Attack and Doubt trying to put a halt to Raz’s plans. Overall, a marvellous portrayal of a community working together to be better mentally.

Persona 5 Royal and Strikers

It’s easy to condense the plot of Persona 5: a bunch of rambunctious kids sticking it to a bunch of evil adults by partaking in metaphysical JRPG battles. But look a little closer, especially with the use of concepts like Persona and Metaverse, and you’ll see the Jungian philosophies interwoven with Persona 5’s story of overcoming society’s troubling psyches.

This is emphasised further in the Royal expansion and the sequel Strikers, which explores Jung’s study of psychology even further. In Royal, the addition of Takuto Maruki as the school psychologist gives us an insight into each character’s fears and doubts.

In Strikers, we see another side to Persona 5’s exploration of a society’s collective mental health through the lens of technology, specifically with the social media app EMMA. Seeing how the influence of celebrities on a platform can truly affect individuals is also a timely and welcome look into more modern societal woes.

In a nutshell, Persona 5 and its expansions showed us how positive heroes are important for a more mentally healthy and accepting society, one that can think critically and choose what is best for an entire group of people instead of just themselves.

Truthfully, this entire reconfiguration of what being a hero truly means in terms of mental health and wellness is a welcome addition to the world of video games, and we can’t wait to see how else developers can come up with more and more relatable protagonists in the future.



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