Few young people are likely to have heard abut Tetris, a puzzle video game created almost four decades ago by a Russian software engineer called Alexey Pajitnov. The game requires players to complete vertical lines by moving differently shaped pieces downwards onto the playing field to get points.
The speed of the falling pieces increases with each level, leaving the player with less time to think about the next move. The game ends when the uncleared lines reach the top of the playing field. Having sold over 200 million copies 13 years ago, it was crowned one of the best-selling video games in the world.
Who would have dreamed that playing Tetris for fifteen minutes can prevent psychological trauma in mothers after a difficult birth? These are the conclusions of a large-scale study conducted at Lausanne University (UNIL) and Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) in Switzerland and published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
Preventive evidence-based interventions for childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are lacking. Yet, almost a fifth of women develop childbirth-related PTSD symptoms after an unplanned caesarean section.
Published by Prof. Antje Horsch UNIL’s Faculty of Biology and Medicine and research consultant at the mother-infant-child department at CHUV, the study was entitled “Single-session visuospatial task procedure to prevent childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder, a multicenter double-blind randomized controlled trial.”
How a video game helps prevent PTSD
She and her team said their findings could pave the way for a routine intervention to prevent the development of post-traumatic stress symptoms linked to childbirth. Their study included 146 women of whom half played Tetris and carried out a placebo activity in the first six hours following their emergency caesarean section.
The intervention was delivered by trained maternity clinicians. The results show that the Tetris group had significantly fewer symptoms of PTSD, and this for up to six months after childbirth.
By engaging the “visuospatial” region of the brain – the area that deals with vision and orientation in space – Tetris can interfere with the memory consolidation of traumatic images, they explained. Such images play a critical role in the development of PTSD.
As memory consolidation takes place within few hours, playing Tetris shortly after a difficult event may thus prevent the development of PTSD. Horsch and her colleagues are the first to prove the preventive effectiveness of such an intervention for traumatic childbirth.
With one in five women negatively impacted after an emergency caesarean section, PTSD linked to childbirth is a common mental health disorder. It manifests itself in the form of flashbacks and nightmares, irritability, difficulty sleeping, and hypervigilance about the baby. These symptoms can seriously disrupt daily life and have repercussions for the whole family. At present, prevention of childbirth-related PTSD is challenging due to the lack of scientifically validated treatments.
The results of Antje Horsch’s team may have a significant impact not only on the prevention of PTSD after traumatic childbirth, but also after other types of trauma.
“We are very enthusiastic because the activity was carried out under the supervision of the midwives and nurses in the maternity units, showing that it can be integrated into routine care. In addition, it’s short, inexpensive, and accessible to anyone, regardless of his or her native language.
It therefore has real clinical potential,” explained Dr. Camille Deforges and Dr. Vania Sandoz, the study’s first authors.
Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the study was conducted in a rigorous manner using a randomized, controlled, double-blind protocol, reinforcing the reliability and robustness of the results. It thereby represents a major advance in mental health care after difficult childbirth and, more generally, after any traumatic event.
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