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The use of games to detect personality disorders

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Samuel Bello

Samuel Bello Dec 11, 2022

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Personality disorders are common place in the world today. In researchers' opinions, it is not clear what causes them yet but it is generally believed to be caused by a combination of a person's genes and the kind of environment the person lived at in an early stage of their life.
For most people, personality disorders usually become diagnosable during their teenage years. Fortunately, this is the period of their lives where they are most likely to be involved with or possibly addicted to gaming. Some of the things to watch out for are excessive bullying, paranoia , and the user's tendency to spend too much time playing these games.
Some research has been done to done to ascertain the correlation between gaming addiction  personality disorders in the past. The proposal here is to use the metrics of their  social predilections during (online video) games in multiplayer mode to determine if they are prone to having personality disorders.
If personality disorders can be detected at an early stage then it's causes can be found out with more accuracy. Once the environmental causes of personality disorders are figured out, they can be prevented more efficiently. This will lead to creating a better community.

personality disorders gaming psychology

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Subash Chapagain

Subash Chapagain2 years ago

This idea can be broken down into two parts:
Developing games specifically to be used in strictly clinical settings for the diagnosis of personality disorders.
Scientists at CSIRO Australia developed a very simple computer game and then used artificial intelligence (neural network approach) to identify patterns in individuals with depression and bipolar disorder. Even nuanced behavioural patterns could be identified. This game makes use of patterns of decision-making by the individuals as they choose among the options offered in the game.     
Unlike traditional mental health assessments, game-based detections have an edge in that the results can directly reflect the underlying brain processes that are affected due by the disorders since the output is recorded as a direct response to the stimuli rather than a classical question-answer. 
In the future, we can expect to see a rise in such specialized games that can very effectively act as diagnostic tools for mental disorders. However, it is important to note that the use of video games for the detection of personality disorders is not yet a widely-accepted or proven method. More research is needed to fully understand the potential of video games in this regard, and any potential use of video games in the detection of personality disorders would likely require careful validation and clinical testing.
2. Using games already in existence and the data therein to build models to be used for diagnosis
Another approach would be to use the games that are already being used by the players. In this approach, we can build models over time to record the data to infer correlations between apparent personality traits with gaming behaviour, choice of games, and in-game temperament.
A study from 2019 also suggested that there is a mild negative correlation between psychological well-being with regard to psychological symptoms, affectivity, coping, and self-esteem     . Moreover, other many studies have indicated that problematic in-game behaviour might have a correlation with real-world predilections for psychological dysfunction     .
However,  it is important to recognize that the use of video games for the detection of personality disorders would likely only be one part of a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation, and would not be used as a standalone diagnostic tool. It would be important for any potential use of video games in this context to be carefully evaluated and integrated into existing diagnostic protocols.

[1]https://www.csiro.au/en/news/news-releases/2019/computer-game-mental-health

[2]https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01731/full

[3]https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01731/full

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Povilas S

Povilas S2 years ago

Subash Chapagain Thank you. You backed up my points and concerns expressed in the comments below with scientific data. That's basically what I was pointing to.
Samuel Bello Sorry if I misunderstood your idea initially, I thought you are proposing "silent researching" for teenager personality disorder traits in domestic settings while they engage in video game playing, which might also be useful, but has a lot of complications. You don't mention anything about the use of the system in clinical settings or anything of that matter in the idea description, so that's the impression I got.
The difficulty of diagnosing personality disorders can't be obvious unless you have experience with that. I'm not a mental health professional but I have recent direct experience with this, that's why the idea is relevant to me and I'm willing to go into the details. Personality disorders are a specific subset of mental illnesses, they are not like depression, bipolar disorder, or psychosis where symptoms are more expressed and therefore easy to identify, I believe this is something Subash Chapagain is also pointing to.
So first, you'd have to use this in clinical settings when the person comes to get their situation evaluated in the first place. Second, it's highly unlikely that games can be used as the only means for diagnosis. They might replace or supplement the social observation part, but direct personal analysis (in a form of a questionary or otherwise) will still be necessary. And third, if we are going to use multiplayer videogames in clinical settings, how will this be organized - will only those awaiting for diagnosis be the players, or can we include random, unrelated online players ("healthy people") as well and how to deal with privacy issues then.

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Samuel Bello

Samuel Bello2 years ago

Subash Chapagain thanks! I think the idea is even more clearly and beautifully written in your own words.👍

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Samuel Bello

Samuel Bello2 years ago

Povilas S I understand. I should have stated some points more clearly, sorry about that. I get your point too now and I'm glad we're on the same page.👍 

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jnikola

jnikola2 years ago

Cool idea! What exactly would you track during the gameplay? How would you track those traits? By asking people questions, or maybe asking other players to recognize traits in others? Did you imagine a sort of checklist or a guidance sheet that would help you decide what to do when certain traits are recognized? How would it work?

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