Video Gamers Podcast - Mental Health and Gaming w/guest Dr. Bean of Geek Therapeutics - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

Gaming host John sits down with Dr. Anthony Bean, clinical psychologist, video game researcher, and founder of Geek Therapeutics, to explore the intersection of mental health and gaming. From the myths around video game addiction to how gaming can actually help us grow emotionally, this episode dives into what it really means to level up in real life. Whether you're curious about therapy through geek culture, want to better understand your own gaming habits, or just love hearing about how your favorite games impact your brain—this is one episode you don't want to miss. Your weekly hit of gaming insights, video game culture, and expert-level conversations—from the Video Gamers Podcast. FOLLOW GEEK THERAPEUTICS: Website: https://geektherapeutics.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geektherapeutics/ Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, and Gaius Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on X: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello fellow gamers and welcome back to the Video Gamers Podcast. Video games are one of the most immersive forms of entertainment available. For millions of people around the world, they serve as entertainment, a hobby, or an escape. But with so many of us spending so much time in front of a screen, it can be difficult to understand what underlying benefits or harm we might be exposing ourselves to. Today, we are diving into the intersection between mental health and gaming with a truly epic guest. But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host, John, and joining me today

is a guest that is literally changing the game when it comes to mental health. A licensed psychologist, researcher, and founder of Geek Therapeutics, it's Dr. Anthony Bean. Dr. Bean, welcome to the show, how are ya? I'm doing pretty good, pretty good, excited to be here. Yeah, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm doing pretty good, pretty good. Excited to be here. Yeah, excited to have you.

People who know me will know that this particular topic is something that's very personal to me. So I am really excited that you took the time out of your day to dive into this. But before we get going in some of the discussions here, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and about geek therapeutics? Absolutely, so I am a licensed psychologist.

I'm actually licensed in about 35 different states. Like a true license, not like, there's something in our field called PsychPACT. I'm not part of that. I actually have like the actual real license across about 35 different states. Does that mean you have to apply for 35 different licenses? 35 year old, I'm 15 away from getting my entire Pokedex done.

Just so we're on the same clear, I'm 15 away. Got it, got it. And it's been a lot of fun, it's been very trying in some cases because every state does something a whole little bit different and the rules and regulations are very identical to other people in other states. However, their interviewing and their application process is wildly different and some of them are wildly outdated in a lot of crazy ways. So I'm licensed in a lot of different states. I see a lot of people. I'm what you would call kind of a concierge psychologist. At this point, I go to different

states and do a lot of psychological assessments because I'm trained in neuropsychology, autism assessment, neurodivergent testing, academic stuff and everything like that. All of those things are being pulled in lots of different states by experts because there's not a lot of people who know how to do it really well. And so that's one of the reasons I got licensed in all of those different states and find myself to be obviously very busy. But we also I would imagine so. We also love what we do at Geek Therapeutics. And that's actually one of my major loves of kind of what we do here, of incorporating geek culture into therapy.

So Geek Therapeutics is a heck of a company. And the reason is, is because we have a whole education component to it, where we'll teach people how to use geek culture and therapy, how to use it in your life to better understand yourself. And so that's one arm of our stuff. We have a research arm where we actually do research, evidence-based research, utilizing geek culture in therapeutic contexts. We've done quite a few

studies published off of that. Then we have a publishing arm where we do all of our evidence based reading and kind of fun readings, like our psychology series of different things. So we've got like D&D, Zelda, Pokemon, all the different types of psychology, books that we do that are based upon a lot of educational components, but are like, I would call them easy readers. Sure. Just turn on their their fun to do it all a bunch of essays and things like that. And then we have the therapy side, where we do the psychological assessment and therapy practices across all these different states.

We have two physical locations in Texas, one in Colorado and one in Virginia. Wow. Crazy. Thank you for sharing that. That sounds like a lot of work, Dr. Bain. My days are never boring. I can tell you that. That's good. I think that that is the best that most of us can ask for. You know, I don't know if this is something you consciously did, but you actually said something that

really resonated with me a lot when you referred to the 35 different states that you're licensed in as being 15 short of your Pokédeck. I love applying sort of nerdy principles to things in my life in general to kind of like gamify them. Like I do that with my fitness a lot. And so the fact that you're doing it with your profession and therefore also, you know, in psychology, it's kind of a cool thing to witness. So I just wanted to make sure to call that out. You brought up actually a really, really good point because a lot of people don't realize

that they can take all the different principles that you learn through gaming. And I know we'll get into all this fun stuff through this fun podcast and everything. But when you take the principles that you learn within the game and you apply them to different avenues of your life it Completely changes everything not just absolutely But also all the benefits that come with it. So like Starcraft's another huge one

I literally played that game until my disc would not work anymore. And that's when when we're taught as a psychologist, you're not taught how to run a business. They teach you how to work with clients and do all sorts of stuff, but they don't teach you any business type of stuff. And so what would you think that a nerdy gamer psychologist is going to fall back on. They're games. Absolutely. What does StarCraft do? It teaches you multiple resource nodes. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of other currency management too,

which is probably something that the education system could do a little better at teaching people. Every day. Yeah, that's crazy. So, you know, we're a gaming podcast and so we like to talk about You know people's passion for gaming first and then we'll be able to dig in deeper to the actual like Clinical practices and stuff here, but so you're a gamer. I'm assuming

Absolutely. What what was your first game that you fell in love with? Oh, it's gotta be Zelda It's at any Zelda is the only game that I will literally stay out night and get the limited editions for. I will pay money for limited editions of any Zelda game that's out there. I've played all the randomizers. I've played every game that's ever come out to a point where we basically when a game's coming out, I take a week off and that's all I'm doing for like 12 hours a day It's like I'm just playing this game going forward exploring and beating the crap out of it So I have to ask then

Maybe a hot take Tears of the kingdom or breath of the wild which is the superior game? Oh So I liked them both Breath of the Wild was unique and I think that's where the gameplay kind of came into play very, very importantly. But I really liked Tears of the Kingdom because of the different striations of levels

that you had to play within and the mechanics in it were very similar to Breath of the Wild. I feel like they added in some additional things and you really can't be bombing the living crap out of someone while flying. Yeah, I have to say, like just strictly speaking from a being able to exercise your imagination, Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece.

I mean, you can play that game however you like, basically. I would agree, Breath of the Wild was kind of a more novel game, but everything they did well in Breath of the Wild, I think they only improved on the Tears of the Kingdom. I think that a lot of people have a much stronger sentimental sort of attachment to Breath of the Wild because of its novelty, but I would have to agree Tears of the Kingdom, for me anyway, this is the better of two very awesome games. I spent so much time underneath, and we call it the darkness, and literally just finding everything and lighting it all up and then literally just lasering and just flying around

being like, oh, you killed me, you stupid little frog. I'm going to get you this time. So to take us kind of to the purpose and the inspiration behind this conversation in this episode, I am a person who has struggled with you know mental health issues, specifically anxiousness for the bulk of my life. It ended up manifesting itself at a very young age. I've had it you know since, I don't know, as long as I can remember, but six, seven, eight years old, before childhood anxiety was kind of recognized as being a thing. a lot and being sort of misdiagnosed with a lot of odds and ends as a doctor's best stab at what might be causing me to feel the way I was at the time.

But anxiousness, depression, things like this seem to be at least, if not more common, at least more commonly identified these days. And in the gaming community, it seems to be, at least from my perspective, particularly prevalent. And I wanted to open up this segment of the conversation by sharing a couple of quotes from people from our Discord community. So Discord member Helidit says, the root of my depression was from my younger years of being bullied. I was always the fat kid before getting older and losing all the weight. In high school I was in an abusive relationship which brought my self-esteem to an all-time low and it wasn't until my early 20s when I decided to be the best version of

myself and video games was definitely part of my recovery. Another one of our very uh noteworthy discord members says named Debt Debt Marp says COVID was rough in the er he's a he's a member of the er staff people dying daily nurses quitting i could deal with all that but what i couldn't deal with was the politicizing and fighting about it. It put my already depressive tendencies into full swing. All I did was work, sleep, and play Nintendo Switch in bed. If not for my children and the lack of guns in my house, I might not be here.

And then a bit of my own personal story. Again, this is something that I've struggled with my whole life. But in a particularly bad episode in my late 20s, I developed like really bad panic attacks and even agoraphobia where I could like barely even get out of bed and The only thing that got me through that period of time I happen to be living with my best friend, Josh, and he would like literally get in bed with me

and play Mario Brothers on the Wii with me for like hours on end just to stop me from shaking. And I honestly don't know what I would have done without my friend at that time. And the video games were just such a engaging distraction from that anxiousness that it provided a, you know, if not a tool, at least a distraction for me to focus on something other than my own feelings. But we also hear in the news a lot about the potential negative effects, like it could

video games be contributing to or causing anxiety? Could they be causing overstimulation? Do they create an inappropriate crutch for parents to rely on so that they're not addressing underlying problems with their kids? So, you know, you are an expert in this field, and I would love to hear from you. What does modern psychology say about mental health effects and gaming? So this is a very wide-reaching question as we'll go through it like little piece by piece here. And in one of our stuff that we're seeing in gaming is it has a lot of pro-social and positive effects upon the individual playing that are only

heightened when the parents play with them. And so what we're seeing in the research is like, yes, these games are really good if used as a tool for helping depression, anxiety, cognitive development. My son learned how to read off a Pokemon. Interesting. Interesting. That's awesome. He's devouring a manga right now. My son learned how to read off a Pokemon. Give you an idea. Interesting, interesting, that's awesome.

He's devouring manga right now. I can't buy them fast enough for him. He's going through an entire manga day, and I'm like, I don't know what I'm gonna do with you, kiddo. But the research around it is very positive around what it can do to help problem solve, logical task manipulation, keeping someone on staff with your, by staff, I mean like your own mind staff

of compartmentalizing different difficulties that you would have. Emotional regulation's a really big one right now and we have a lot of what we'd call mixed research. For me, I would say that- Sorry, can you describe what emotional, what was the word you used? Emotional?

Emotional regulation. Emotional regulation, thank you. Yeah, so emotional regulation is whether you can kind of calm yourself down when you get overexcited, anxious, depressed, angry. Something along those is like, how can you satisfy what your body is needing right now with being able to bring yourself down to a more calm,

less emotional state? As our emotions go higher, our logical sense goes down and vice versa. So when we have someone who's dysregulated in this capacity from an emotional standpoint, whether it's like brother, sister, didn't do well in school, didn't do well in a game or something like that, our goal is to be like, great, let's talk about it. Let's build that regulation around it and let's get you re-regulated and less emotional. It's logical so we can actually talk about it and then process it in a lot of very powerful ways. And so when we're seeing things for kids

in emotional regulation, what we're seeing is there, there's a time for kiddos, kiddos, adolescents, where too much gaming can have what we call like an overdraft effect on them where they have a hard time reacclimating back to their normal functionality. However, for every kid it's different. That's the whole thing. My daughter, I'll give you examples with my two kids. My daughter can play Mario Kart for like two, three hours, half the time of her life, and she's like, yeah, I'm good, I'm done. Not a problem. My son, when he does it for, we're about an hour and 15, when he does it for a little bit more of an hour and 15,

we start to have like that hangover dysregulation effect happen. And that's when I work with them and be like, let's process what you did in the game. Let's talk about it. Let's get these things handled. What do you think you're going to do when you can play the game again? What are ones on our next time that we can think forward that we're going to get a chance to do that again? Those are kind of like those are those are regular regulations that we have to do for

our own personal emotions, but also for the people kind of like those are those are regular regulations that we have to do for our own personal emotions but also for the people kind of around us it works a lot better when you play the game with your kids so my son loves Kirby all friends all stars friends and allies whatever it is right now it's one of the Kirby games that's out and he enjoys playing by himself but he enjoys it much more and it's much easier to to help regulate any sort of like say if you're just regulation that will come out of it if I play with him do you mind if I ask how old your son and daughter are yeah so my daughter's five and my son is eight eight okay so I think I don't maybe this is a gross overgeneralization, but it seems like

People of that age are are generally quite eager to get their parents Attention anyways, and if you can couple that with an activity like video gaming That seems like a like a double win Something that Jamie Madigan talks about in some of his material and he talked about on our show as an advantage to gaming, specifically in social settings, is it provides sort of the social scaffolding required to make connections, which is kind of why online gaming, there's a lot of positives to it. You can create friendships by way of gaming that you might not have been able to otherwise

because you already have something in common. And I can only imagine that that sort of social scaffolding concept extends to the home as well. Oh, massively, massively. Absolutely. It works the same way with board games and stuff. I run a Pokemon D&D group for my kids and their friends. And the amount of social capacity

that they gain from that, from being able to talk about how do they solve the problems that I put in front of them, is undeniably powerful for them. Because then they take those things and you can see them start to work with it and be like, well, when we talked about it and we worked together and we traded ideas in the game, it worked out really well.

But when we also do this outside the game, when we're having a problem, we can also solve our own problems. And it's like you're taking the same concepts that you're learning in one and you're overlaying them in your other life. That's what gaming does with video games, board games, all of that stuff. That helps us really understand like a little bit more about ourselves, but how the world functions in it. They're great learning opportunities. Yeah, I would agree with that. So something that is

that I'm very curious about being in my role here with the Video Gamers podcast. I mean, I interact with gamers like all day every day. Basically, we've got a very active discord of about a thousand members and many of the members of that community are quite active. You know, we have regular engaging conversations with people all the time. And then obviously outside of this in my personal life, I'm a geek of all flavors. I'm really into Star Wars and Warhammer and any flavor of nerdity that is out there. And I don't know, maybe I'm off base in this presumption, but it seems like there is a pretty high co-incidence of people who are into kind of nerd

slash otaku fandom and anxiety depression. Do you notice that as well? Is that, do you find that there is a higher incidence of emotional distress in this community than in others, broadly? So this is an interesting thing, and all related to our DSM is our Bible for diagnosing. And so the way that I was kind of-

Can you now state what DSM stands for? Diagnostic Statistic Manual. Thank you. And so when we go and look at that, it says what we call prevalence rates, which is how often do these things actually come up. So the highest prevalence rates are depression and anxiety. And they basically do an estimation,

I'm using air quotes here, estimation of how much the population actually has these diagnoses. And those things things every time they come out with a new one Range anywhere from four to seven percent of the population for anxiety and depression broadly not gamers But brought correct broadly on that one So what what I would probably say is do I see a lot of people? And a lot of my people are great geeks nerd, stuff like that, they come to me because I understand their culture, I understand what they're wanting.

Sure. And we can do all that stuff. All right, so when we look at that in what we call only focusing on one aspect of it, they're using it usually as a way of coping with the world, with something that's happening with their own lifestyles. So is it prevalent? Yes. Is it only in that area? No, is what I would say. I would say it's also out other places, but other people use different coping mechanisms. Some people

would work. I know a guy who just builds things and then donates them to charity because he needs something to do with his hands when he gets anxious. Yeah, that that makes sense in in my own. You know, I love gaming for the sake of gaming. Like right now, I am absolutely hooked on this game called Clare Obscure Expedition 33. It is amazing. And that is a game that I could dive into with pure joy in my heart all day every day. It's honestly like a distraction to like not be playing it right now. Like I'm just so absolutely immersed in it.

But I'll be honest, there have been other periods in my life and I'm so thankful that I've got I've got, you know, I've got a very strong control over how I manage this stuff now. strong control over how I manage this stuff now, but there have been periods in my life where like I relied on gaming as a distraction from the stuff that was going on in in my head. Is it possible that I could have been engaged in other activities that might have had a greater therapeutic effect than gaming? Or do you find that when people are in periods of acute stress that, hey man, whatever gets you through it, like get through it and we can figure out kind of the treatment later? Do you have any opinions on that?

So they go, people will go through whatever is most comfortable for them, whatever has helped them in the past, whatever is going to help them go for the future. And that's a, is it gaming? Is it some of the other activity? It could be a lot of things. I play soccer myself and I love the game. I coach soccer. I do a lot of other things outside of just nerd and gaming type stuff.

But I think it's also dependent upon what the person wants to do, how they use the stuff in the past, and what works, there's some people out there that are like, I don use the stuff in the past, and what works. There's some people out there that are like, I don't really care for video gaming, but I love anime. And so they'll go watch anime instead. And that helps kind of like, re-regulate them or kind of help them process something because

they can utilize the different tropes found within the context of the anime, the storyline and things like that, just understand what they're experiencing. So, I mean, for everyone, it's going to be a little bit different in my opinion. Did you do any harm? No. You went to what's normal for you as a person. And I think the video game industry is only going to increase significantly every year. It just continues to massively increase.

Yeah, it's a bit bigger than the movie and the music industry combined at this point Yeah, well, that's because movies have lost their their ability to be unique Everything gosh ain't that the truth it's terrible But but I think that's with that games are so immersive and they're so Like impactful in our world like there are new mythologies what I like to say. If you as a person play this game, that mythology means something to you.

And that mythology is what we wanna be talking about because whether you're conscious of it or unconscious of it, that's the piece that's grabbing you. And that piece is important. It's not something to just be like, oh yeah, you're just playing video games. Yeah, you're not doing anything with your life. Oh, your friends online, they don't really matter or anything like that. Those are real relationships. Those are people that you

have something with. A connection. Those things shouldn't be overlooked. Well, I agree and I'll tell you, I would love your professional opinion on this because this came sort of like unguided for me, but I remember It was probably about Ten Ten eleven years ago. I was going through a very hard emotional time I was going through this is probably a bit personal here, but I was going through a divorce and had lost a job at the

same time. And it was like soul crushing to me. And I'm already predisposed to anxiousness. And I remember kind of being at a precipice or a fork in the road where I was like, I am feeling rock bottom right now. And I think that there's probably two things I can do with this. I can either take this to a terrible end

or I can figure out what to do with it. And I have been a fan of, again, nerd culture my entire life. My fandom started probably with comic books and I've been a Captain America fan, fan of again nerd culture my entire life my Fandom started probably with comic books and I've been a Captain America fan if you can't tell I've been a Captain America fan If I was in my if I was in my office at home, you would see my Zelda sword Yeah, I'm just trying to get my halillion shield that that's like that's one thing I couldn't conventions. I'm always searching for metal one. So I'm sure they're out there by the way. Oh, there though. They are I

remember kind of reframing my Anxiousness in a way where I go like, okay John the only difference between Somebody who is a between somebody who is a hero and who is not a hero is that heroes do hero stuff. And there's a great line in the Batman, the Chris Nolan Batman franchise where they talk about, like, it's not who you think you are

or what you think about yourself deep down inside, it's the things you do that define you. And I remember reading somewhere on the internet or hearing somewhere that like physiologically there's no distinction between anxiousness and excitement, like they're sort of the same chemical expression or whatever. And I go like, okay, John, so you're going to, from now on, interpret this anxiety as excitement. And anytime you start to feel this way, rather than succumbing to your fear,

you're going to take this as an opportunity to be brave. And when I thought about this through my Captain America lens as somebody who, you know, he's not a real person, but he's real enough to me as somebody who I idolize and who I aspire to be, I go every time I take the opportunity to be brave, I can become more Captain America like and the importance of feeling brave outweighs the importance of avoiding whatever I am fearful of. And that was a very important reframing for me. From your perspective, is that something that Geek Therapeutics is trying to actively promote, or can you tell me a bit more about

how you are integrating gaming culture and practices into people's therapies? Yeah, absolutely. So what you did right there is pretty much what we do in therapy is we go in and hone in on what those things are. So Captain America, like I could do this all day, type scenario. B Captain America, like, I could do this all day, type scenario.

Like, you can, you can do it all day. Those are not some, that's not something to shy away from. It's something that takes courage. Captain America throughout the movies, comics, and everything else that we've done, you can see such a wonderful trajectory where he never left his morals, in a sense. And that is what- his morals are his superpower

That's like yes, that happened. He happened to get super soldier serum, which if you know where to get some sign me up But but his morals are his superpower. Absolutely Yeah, and that's that's what we're we would focus in on and be like, alright So morally we can succumb, right, to what's happening right here, or we can use it as an opportunity to move forward. When we're faced with a crossroad and everything, it's like Robert Frost's two roads, Path Not Taken, we're very used to doing something that we're normally accustomed to, and that's what leads to, like, say that anxiety, that depression, that feeling of like, ah, something's up and I don't know what's going

on. That's the road, the path that we've always taken. The question is, what does that other path look like? How do we go down this other path that doesn't resemble this familiarness that happens? What you did right there with the reframing is you chose to be like yes I can see these both paths. Yes. I know what this one looks like, but I want to try this one I want to see what happens down down in this this area and then you took it and you worked your way through it Tim you used as kind of like a Captain America as a model as a guiding leader in

In that walking down that path and we're talking a metaphorical type type scenarios like guiding leader in that walking down that path. And we're talking a metaphorical type scenarios, like green things like that. He was your guide stone. He was your person in there to even potentially go get your soul stone in a sense for that one. Love it, love it. Speaking my language. So what do you say?

I find myself very fortunate to have been able to navigate that more or less on myself. And I've had lots and lots of therapy and have been in you know, I've had other forms of treatment as well to kind of get me through some tough times, but I feel very fortunate that I was able to kind of like identify something that was able to work for me and has worked for me sustainably for a long time and frankly created habits that have led to a great degree of both professional and personal success for myself.

What do you do to help people who might be struggling with that? Like it was a choice for me to be able to go like, which way do I go? But for a lot of people, they might have a hard time identifying that choice. What are you doing to guide people towards that? The simple question that we usually ask is, what do you do for fun? What is the thing that you use for,

some people would say a distraction, some people would say escapism. To me, those are not necessarily just negative connotations. Those are ways that we have learned to cope. And coping skills are very helpful for any mental health problem that are out there. It becomes a problem when that's the only way that you choose to cope.

Because we should have in our toolbox, our personal toolbox for anything that's happening, we should have multiple ways to work with a situation. If one doesn't work, we try to work on the next one. And if that doesn't work, we go to the next part in our toolbox that does work in that area. So for people, it's what do you do for fun? How have you used that to understand yourself? How do you use that to better understand what your problem is and then let's have that conversation around it. It's a lot of metaphorical narrative thinking in a lot of ways of how is this scenario, this object, this thing that we're talking about help you address those concerns that you've had in those

past and how can it help right now? Let's bring this to awareness. So we're not just going home and just playing mindless video games. It's like, no, do it in a mindful capacity to understand why this matters to you and how we can utilize that. With adolescents, it's a little bit harder to do that. Adults, it's easier.

So that's a great point with regards to, channeling it into what do you enjoy doing, but I think that there's a large chunk of the population out there that would argue, well, I wouldn't say that they would argue, but that their understanding of gaming in general is that it may be contributing to a lot of these problems. That you hear about it all the time people have like electronics addiction or use it as a, maybe a harmful escape from reality, like escaping from something that they should be addressing. There's obviously lots of theories out there

that they might be contributing to people's aggression. You know, whenever you hear about like school shootings or some crazy thing happening, it's always like, when I was growing up, it was these people listen to Marilyn Manson. And now it's these people play too much Grand Theft Auto. That stuff with overstimulation, sleep disruption. What is your, I guess I should say, what does the science say about this stuff? I'm presuming you have like studies available to you. I would love to hear what the data says about that kind of thing.

So actually with all the school shootings and stuff along those lines, if you go and look at them, these are all public knowledge, so anyone can go in and research them. If you go and look at what was going on with them, what video games they played all in the reports? it's actually not shooters or anything like that that are negative or aggressive gaming

Most of them are kind of like escapism dance dance revolutions usually a popular one in a weird weird way Other other ones that are not considered to be aggressive but more more like E for everyone, E 10 plus things along those lines. Those are the games that are being played more. Those are the games that have been locked in a log for hours and everything along those lines. Sorry, I just want to make sure I'm connecting the dots here. So you're saying that there is some correlation between gaming and negative or disruptive behaviors, but it's not the shooters. It's more of these like, uh, like rhythm games or, um, you know, you mentioned DDR think things like that. Some of the more not e-sports, but like some

of the more like quick play engaging stuff. Is that so I wouldn't say that it is leading into it because all of these people also have had a long history of mental health issues. That's what I would probably say it into. Where I was going with it was that the games are not the ones that should be blamed. Even though what's a headlines ran, like it's really hard to pull that headline back.

And that's really what gets people to read news is like, what's the headline today? What's happening in our world right now? That's what's going to get people to read the news articles. Addictions everywhere. Addiction is such a ubiquitous use of a word. I've never heard it being used more than in the last five years. Be like, Oh, I'm so addicted to these tacos. Oh, I'm so addicted to this water. Well, I, you can be addicted to tacos, sir. That's, that's a healthy addiction. They're delicious. They're delicious. They are delicious.

Yeah. And it's, but it's the, the whole concept behind, uh, the idea of, of addiction is, um, I think in the, in our research, in think in our research, in our world, our psychology world, there's more and more people that are leading towards what we call a behavioral addiction rather than identifying one specific thing. And the reason that we're going into that concept of a behavioral addiction is because it widens the parameters a little bit more and it incorporates a lot more. So it doesn't have to be just video games,

dance or slot machines or something like that. It can be running highs. It could be going for working out in some ways. There, when we talk about the behavioral addiction, it's just sometimes things just get kind of switched around a little bit in order to be like, yes, I'm not necessarily doing this type of behavioral mechanism, but bit in order to be like, yes, I'm not necessarily doing this type

of behavioral mechanism, but now I'm doing this one, which has very similar aspects to what I've experienced in the past for what got me into the problem, let's say with video games. Now I do it and I'm running myself, but I'm running myself ragged in a way. I'm overworking, I'm either running and I'm not having good nutrition, I'm

not giving my body time to get back together, rehydrate itself, let the muscle tears take care of themselves in some capacity. Those are what we start to see some difficulties with going in and why we start pushing towards a behavioral addiction. So is what you're saying that there is not causality between gaming and some of these behaviors, but there is some correlation between people who have maybe some unhealthy addiction behaviors and their gaming habits and also some of these like negative

behaviors that manifest themselves in reality. Is that more or less what you're saying? That's kind of more or less what I'm saying. It doesn't have to be just gaming in a sense. It can be a lot of other things that can have negative impacts. Sure, sure, sure. Like working out or... You can absolutely overwork out in lots of ways and, and be massively negative to, uh, to your health. I mean, isn't it like the, um, world's, uh, you know, the universe man or stuff like that. There's so many stories of them.

They push their bodies to such extremes that when they don't, uh, do it anymore, their bodies break down. Oh yeah. Ronnie Coleman is a, is a great example for anybody who's like in the bodybuilding. He's like, you know, one of the most preeminent bodybuilders of all time can barely move now because he just overdid it. He just absolutely destroyed his body.

Yeah, that's interesting. So I think that I would have to assume that if anybody was able to identify, self-identify that they were in one of these sort of, you know, behavior cycles, that they would, like, if they had the choice, be able to step out of it and go, okay, you know, clearly this is leading down a bad path. What do I do to correct? But I think the challenge that a lot of people have is identifying whether or not it is a harmful behavior

or a harmful manifestation of behavior. What can people do to identify whether or not there is a problem and what they should be doing to fix it. So one of the easiest and most simplest things that you can do is track your time. Track your time and what you did. I played video games for two hours today. I cooked a dinner for 30 minutes.

It's about putting yourself into that tracking stuff of like, where did all my time go today? I feel like I lost my entire day. What was I doing? And so what that does is it helps track what is actually happening during the day, but also then starts to allow you to start categorizing certain components for it.

It's hard in the beginning, because you're gonna think you're like, oh, this is stupid, why am I doing this? I don't want to get this out and do that. I would just tell you like jot it on your phone, go into your notes, just jot it, be like, played video games for two hours, cooked for 30 minutes, ate dinner with friends

and family, two hours, something like that. It just helps bring awareness to it, because that's really what we work most heavily with. Adolescents, adults, families, is where do we have to do to bring that awareness to it? Because when we're aware of it, we can then take an observational approach adolescents, adults, families, is where do we have to do to bring that awareness to it? Because when we're aware of it, we can then take an observational approach to the concept and then start making different decisions.

Very interesting. Very interesting. So I think you touched on this earlier, but you mentioned that being able to sort of identify and work with people when they're a bit older and they've got sort of the social awareness and self-awareness to kind of like handle discussions like this and handle introspection, it becomes a lot easier,

but it's a lot harder in children and adolescents. So in general, do you think that parents should be... how can parents manage their kids like screen time? How can a parent be aware of whether or not a kid's reliance on gaming is a positive or a negative thing? When you start seeing grades drop, start seeing social aspects outside of it, sports drop, other things that are outside of the gaming, start to be like, put on a secondary importance, that's your sign.

That's your sign that something's going on. If grades are dropping, why are grades dropping? Oh, my child decided to start playing four hours of video games fun before he was playing one to two hours Let's take a look at this Let's bring this back down to one to two hours and let's put a little bit more time into the the educational component for it Maybe there's an undiagnosed learning disability. Maybe there's something going on harassment at school. Maybe there's there's something else going on But it's also engaging your kids in a

lot of different ways to really help out with it, but it's being aware and mindful of what they're doing. Playing with your kids, let's say if you're worried about what games they're playing, play with them. Have them be the teacher. Have them teach you how to play that game, and you can act whether you know how to. I play all the systems, so I know how to play that game because, and you can ask whether you know how to, like I play all the systems, so I know how to work everything really well. But most parents who come in here, like gaming is a whole new thing for them. My parents, they don't know how to do anything

in gaming or anything like that. When I go home for like holidays, I'm literally spending about an entire day just being their IT person and resetting everything because they've done something to their settings and they have to wait a little bit till I get there to just reset the whole thing for them. But they don't understand what it is.

Me with my kids, it's gonna be a completely different upbringing for them because I know what gaming is, I know it's very prevalent, I know how to work with it. And we can work together and they wanna play with me. So all the, everything is right there perfectly for it. But parents are the biggest number thing that I've always seen is, you know what games your kids are playing?

And most of them are like, yeah, something online. Do you know even know what system you have? Are you one of the parents that calls a Sony PlayStation and a Nintendo? How much knowledge do we have to like there's nothing there's nothing wrong with that Like I grew up in Southern, California and all soda is coke all video games are Nintendo. So I Yep, that's that's what my my mom did too. So it's it's something now now I have all the systems and everything that my kids play on them and we do we do things We play together and if they're they don't play in there unless I'm in there because they want to hang out

They want to do stuff with us right now, and they're at the age And of course I'm gonna do that because I want to be there with my kids in a lot of ways But it's also about being in that that of, I'll go in and play with them. I will absolutely do those things. And they're like, you're really good. I'm like, I just have a lot more experience than you guys. I know I've been working on these controls since I was your age.

It's not, when you get to my age, you'll be perfectly fine and able to do it too. Yeah. And you've touched on this social aspect quite a bit. I love the idea of playing games with your kids. When I'm thinking about my own experience with gaming and anxiousness, certainly the game provided a utility where I'm like engaged in something that requires a lot of attention and therefore I'm paying less attention to like how I'm feeling. But I would say that the most therapeutic sort of aspect of it was that,

for instance, I was playing with my friend Josh and I no longer felt alone. There was another period in my life where, again, I was going through really bad spat and some of my very best friends, CJ and Tara, we would play Magic the Gathering together and just literally having that distraction, playing it socially provided a lot of rewards. So I love what you're talking about as far as, you know, parents play these games with their kids. You know, this is something that you'll both gain from very unlikely that you'll have a bad time and you'll get to understand your kid more. But on that same note, I think that there is a, I worry that perhaps there is kind of like a, what would you call it, like a doom loop that

video games conveniently provide now in the way of distracting your kids. So I've seen it more and more often now where like if a kid is being unruly in a restaurant or a supermarket or something along those lines The parents will just like give them their iPad or they'll have their own special like phone with apps and stuff on it as a distraction and it becomes this sort of like virtual nanny where they're like, you know, I I've had enough of your behavior here's this thing that'll shut you up and you know for me as somebody without kids who's like, just, you know, observing this from the outside, I'm like, oh, man, that's great that you have this tool available to you to shut the kid up. But I have to imagine that, you know, there's probably some underlying behavior that you're

skirting by doing this to your kids. you know, where do you draw the line as a parent between like acceptable distraction and potentially harmful distraction? So our kids don't get that. They only get an iPad if we're going on a trip, like on a plane, or a road trip, that's three hours plus. That's our rule. Other than that, they have to bring toys, other types of tools, books, stuff like that. And even when they do get that iPad because we're traveling or driving for that time, they have to switch it back and forth. We only have one iPad and two kids.

And so they have 25 minutes on it and then it's 25 minutes for the next person and vice versa. So they have to keep on switching tasks on what they're doing. So it's not just a continuous reinforcement of one thing over another. When we see this in supermarkets, restaurants, all that type of thing, What parents are doing, they're

just reinforcing something that they're going to have a lot harder time with it later on. Our kids, I've been down in, I don't know if people are going to know what Sprouts is. But Sprouts, you from California, you're going to know what Sprouts is. And I've had my son like have a hard time because we didn't get the graham crackers that he wanted one time. And he just sat down on the ground and started tantruming. And I'm like, this is fine, we're allowed to tantrum.

We're allowed to have this experience and this feeling of not getting what she wants, but I'm gonna get down there with you. And I went and sat on the floor with him and he didn't want anything to do with me for the longest time. And by longest time, to me, it felt like eternity. Like I'm just sitting there holding a tent.

I'm holding the tension for a tantruming four-year-old in the middle of sprouts. And then what eventually happens is the kid notices that you're down there with him and you're not shaming, you're not doing anything bad, you're not doing anything that should be able to be seen as reinforcing not just the behavior, but also giving in. You're having what we call authoritative boundary and they come into your lap and they start to regulate themselves and that's what we do and we're like, look, we can get this

next time or we can try to do this a little bit later. But we have enough right here, why don't we try to do this aspect first, and then we'll come back to this next time we're here. That's what starts getting your kids closer to you. That's what engages them in a much more calming way, but also teaches them that rules, boundaries are important and that self-regulation comes second in those instances. But as they got older, that four to five minutes of tantruming

has come down to about 20 seconds of like, why am I so with this? What's going on? Let's take a couple minutes. Let's have a seat. No, I'm going to go sit on the stairs. That's cool. I'll be right here on the couch. You let me know when you're ready to have a chat and we'll work through this together." It just sits there like this, like this. And then 20 seconds later, be like, you know, I'm feeling really angry. That's great. You're allowed to have that. Let's talk about what's making you angry. It's not why, it's what. Because it is an external source that is creating that type of feeling within us. And if we can recognize that this external source

is something that I don't like, I can then talk about it because it's not me. It's not me as a person, that's the bad thing. It's this external source that I just need to process. How do I handle this? How do I problem need to process. How do I handle this? How do I problem solve? How do I go forward with this? That's what we're doing with our kids. I love it. That's a great example. So would you say then that in general that parents should be more cautious

about how they apply these electronics as a distraction for their kids? Like would you? I would, I would say yes. I think it's important because kind of the rule of thumb is for every, think of it as like, there's things called extinction bursts, which means the tantrums that you originally gave

the iPad 2 for behavior management, if you've been doing that for two weeks, it takes about four weeks to get rid of that behavior. Again, there's going to be extinction bursts all throughout, which it gets worse than where it originally started. The more you do that, the longer you do it, the harder and longer it takes to get rid of that type of coping mechanism that isn't necessarily a positive one or helping them kind of moving themselves forward. Interesting. Interesting. Thank you. That's I'm sure that there's a lot of parents listening to this that are maybe questioning their practices right now. That's really useful to hear. So getting back to sort of the social aspect of gaming, that's one of the things that Jamie mentioned was a benefit of gaming,

is the social scaffolding. And you've mentioned a few times now that the social aspect of, you know, being able to play with your kids as being a big benefit. Um, and, uh, I, I have another beautiful example that I wanted to share from, uh, my friend, Matt in, in California during COVID his, uh, his in-laws were, you know, they're, they're in their advanced age and certainly not like They're in their advanced age and certainly not like gamers at all, but they found themselves in a situation where they were now very isolated and fearful of just like being outside because of the risks that the world was presenting to them at the time. And during that period of time, they found gaming. The grandmother, or his mother-in-law started playing, I wanna say it was Breath of the Wild actually,

started playing Breath of the Wild, and his father-in-law just ended up watching her play this as like long formform entertainment and she ended up logging hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours into this game and without this game they may not have I don't know their their COVID experience would have been very very different than it was and I just thought it was such a great example of like what gaming can do even in a very small circle, literally two people to help get people through a tough time. But there is a counter to that

that I think is extremely pervasive, especially in online gaming with communities that exist. And it's something that everybody who's ever played something competitive has has has experienced at some point is toxicity and harassment in online gaming communities. Now, what is your opinion on the role of that in mental health? I can't imagine there is any positive aspect to that. There's there's there's not a lot of positive aspects to to any of that. Toxic is as toxic does is it's kind of like what's what we kind of say in in the area is that if someone's being toxic,

you're welcome to cut them out of your game play. It's it's happened multiple times. You work in a guild, someone's toxic being a D.I.C.K., cut them out. Within the virtual space, it's not great for your mental health. It's not great to be harassed, always put down, put into those categories of feeling like you don't matter. There's nothing great about it. It's prevalent. Is it getting better? I think it's getting more covert. While it was getting more covert, now I think it's more overt, mainly because of our current administration. Things are no longer covert. They're more overt.

Yeah, but even that is a chicken and the egg thing. Like what caused you know, but so it just people become emboldened when, when, when the external sources are all kind of doing it, people become more emboldened. That's why toxic is as toxic does. If one person's toxic to one person over here, then that person's going to be toxic back. Then these other people be like, Oh, you're being the sec case. I'm going to be one too. Everyone just becomes this whole toxic community. And you people be like, oh, you're being the I see case. I'm going to be one too. Everyone just becomes this whole toxic community. And you're just like, why, why would you keep, why would you do this?

So, and that's, that's our big problem. So perhaps the more constructive way to think about this is then this exists. What can people do to screen themselves from it? You have to recognize when it's a, when it's happening and you can stand up, you can be a voice of reason against and be like, no, I don't like that. A lot of people when I've worked with adolescents and stuff like that, they want to stand up for their peers. They don't like bullying.

They don't like those types of harassment, but they're also fearful that if they stand up that they're going to be the next target. One of the biggest things that we always teach them is it takes one and that other people are going to come forward too. But it's also very important how do you address it? What is the language being talked about? If it's very derogatory, get someone else involved. If it's just like someone's bullying, pushing, and you're standing up

for someone, stand up, be like, hey, this isn't okay. Usually it just takes one person, one to two people, Max, to stop an incident from happening. It just takes two people. Man, I am so glad you said that. There is a principle that I live by, it's well known, but it's one that resonates with me quite strongly, is that the only thing necessary for evil to exist is for good people to do nothing. And this kind of drills right back into my whole, you know, Captain America worship, but every time you're fearful of something, if you know it's not right, you have to do something. You just have to take it upon yourself to do something. If you yourself can't do something, there certainly is somebody who can help. And so I'm glad you said that. And hopefully,

hopefully the listeners will take something from that. So I'm curious, what does, what does an actual example of gaming based therapy look like? Like if somebody starts working with game, a geek therapeutics, what would that actually look like for somebody? So it's usually multi-session, but we go over in a lot of ways of identifying what are your geek principles? What are the things that you like to do?

We start off with like, do you like anime, D&D, LARPing, video games? We go into like, what's your favorite one of each one? And we kind of build like a profile in that aspect. And then once we have that profile built, we start talking about those specific more nuanced interests. Like for me, it would be Zelda in a sense, because that's my love.

And when we do that, we then bring the game in, the anime, the short clips or something. Like anime is one of the easiest things to work with because you can find clips almost anywhere online of what you're specifically talking about. And on top of that, you can have a very, anime episodes are usually about 20 25 minutes long and so if there's a specific minute and a half that you specifically want to to have a

conversation about you guys can watch that right there together and then you can talk about why is this impactful what is going on in here is it the is it the the actual narrative ontology that's happening in there? Is it the relationship between these characters? Is it that they overcame their differences and they worked together? There's a lot of different things that can kind of go into and that helps out with understanding who we are and why this spoke to us. Because we watch things.

Let's, uh, man, Guardians of the Galaxy 2. it's a hard one, the ending of it, right? He may have been your father, but he wasn't your daddy. Like, if you have a relationship with your kids or your dad and stuff like that, man, that quote, that hits you so freaking hard. And the reason it hits you is because it means something very, very important. That relationship you have with your son, with your dad is one that no one else has.

Is the one that is so important and based with you that it can bring you to tears. And that speaks to the importance of it. That experience that a lot of us as fathers had, other kids are having with their fathers, that's the most important What are you doing? Oh my gosh. It's now Sunday, guys. The next one comes out really quick. If you play the games, you're going to know. Yeah, but unfortunately, a lot more people played the first one than the second one. Oh my gosh.

Well, if you need to cut that out, you need to cut that out. But on that note right there, people who didn't play the games themselves, they lost someone that they had a huge attachment to, and they don't understand why they're feeling this type of attachment loss, and that is very important to have a conversation around,

and that's why we then would bring it into like a therapeutic realm of like, what did this person mean to you? Like, what was his actions? Let's go over his entire experience of him. He was a father, he lost his daughter. He went into this other journey. He sacrificed the world for Ellie in a different way.

And now all the shit's in the fan. I like that. And you're like, what is happening? And then the event occurs That's important to process. I Love it. So, I mean it sounds like at the core of geek therapeutics is taking these taking these examples of you know human emotion and behavior and

ways of processing things and applying them to people's real lives, which I absolutely love. I think it is a genius idea and it seems like there's probably a growing population out there that can get some utility out of this. So it meant I got to say thank you so much for starting something like this. It is amazing. It is amazing to know that an organization like yours exists and it's awesome to hear that you guys are doing so well. We practice what we preach. That's the biggest thing. Like there's tons of people that are out there that will do certain things and they're saying, oh, this works, but they don't practice it. They don't do the actual work in there or they're not licensed to and they're doing

things that they probably shouldn't be doing, causing more harm than helping. We are very firm and like we would not suggest doing something like this unless one, you're trained on how to do it and two, you know what you're doing in appropriate manners. But three, we do it every day. Yep. Most useful behaviors don't work in principle, they work in practice. Yeah, thank you for that. Great, great knowledge. So we are running a little short on time. I want to make sure to get, we had some very interesting questions come from our community and I wanted to make sure to address a few of them here. So the

network introvert on TikTok asks, do you have any advice for parents of a nine-year-old with AUDHD? He loves games and video games on the tablet but it's very difficult to regulate putting it down. He loves games and video games on the tablet, but it's very difficult to regulate putting it down. It would depend on kind of like, and obviously as a clinician, I can't diagnose or anything like that. But one of the biggest things that we always say is how long is he playing? It can he work to get that thing? Is there a behavioral mechanism that if I do all my chores, I get all my homework done,

I get to play for these things? Is there a token economy that's going in? Those things. Is there a token economy that's going in? Those things. A lot of people, parents that have neurodivergent children, when they hear token economy, they think ABA therapy and they think ABA is really crappy. ABA has a purpose. That's it.

That's the biggest thing that I could tell you. I'm not an ABA therapist, but the principles that are behind it can be gravitated and utilized and extrapolated outside of just what ABA therapy is. So token economy, that's just, we live by a token economy. I work every day so I can get paid.

Welcome to a token economy. I go to the grocery store. I hand you money. You give me groceries. Token economy. We live in that type of world. And so if you can use those principles in a realistic setting for your child,

such as you have 15 minutes and then we're gonna do this, timers and everything like that, and find a stopping place. Some video games, I think it's one of my biggest pet peeves growing up, was like video games, they didn't have a stopping point when we were younger in some places, so we had to get to the end of the level to write down this silly code, so we can start back where we used to be, at like a save point. But what was, what happens now is there are save points, there are places where you have an opportunity to stop. And if we can get our kids to recognize that like,

oh, here's my opportunity to stop, let's put the game down. Even if they need an extra three to five minutes, that's okay to give them those extra three to five minutes. You don't have to be such an authoritarian person. Be like, no, 15 minutes is done, done, like that. Be like, find a stopping place. I'm gonna give you a couple extra minutes, get it done.

If they push the boundary, pull the boundary back. It really just comes down to, it's a push and pull system. And you're working with them. It's hard. You gotta work with them. Yeah, love it. MinecraftGamer8252 on YouTube says, what kinds of games or genres have the best positive effect on anxiety and

depression? And what is the actual mechanism of that working? Like what chemical gets released in the brain? Yeah, so this is a if this was a scientist asking this one, I would say this is a bait question In a way and for everyone's gonna play a different game a different genre that's gonna have the better effect for for them I love space games to give you an idea I love space games fantasy games, but you put me in a shooter like Call of Duty I could care less like that does then that's not gonna do anything for me a shooter like Call of Duty, I could care less. Like that's not gonna do anything for me.

People are gonna gravitate towards specifically what game, what genres that make them feel good. And it's gonna help them out in those instances. So it's hard to say what's gonna be the better one, what's not gonna be one. It's about recognition, it's about co-regulation, it's about cooperative play. Those things actually help us

because we feel like we're making some of that thing. The chemical you're asking is dopamine, but don't get drawn into the dopamine principle because it's not really well researched and it's not really well based right now. I'll give you an example of this type of stuff. Dopamine when you play video games is released at like 150 to 200 percent of what normally is in there. You eat cheese pizza, it's 300 percent. You do go to 5,000. So let me ask you, how intensely is our video games really working within our dopamine regulation system?

Are they there? Sure. Cheese pizza better? Absolutely. I'll be reinforced by cheese pizza every day. Yeah. Pineapple on pizza or no? I'm okay with it. I prefer it not, but I can eat it. I love pineapple. So Yeah, I've kind of come around on that. Like, you know, whatever you prefer is fine. You know, put whatever on whatever is fine. I just My favorite is pepperoni mushroom. I don't know what about it, but if it's just good, man, it's just so good together.

Pepperoni and olive for me, but yeah, exactly. I no longer have a staunch anti-pineapple on pizza viewpoint, but I just, for me, it doesn't enhance the product at all. And so it's like, why put it on there? Last community question I wanted to ask here is really good one from people wonder on our discord is what is something that the average person can realistically do to help better mental health within their current community? So this is going to be based upon the community that you're part of. So, this is going to be based upon the community that you're part of. The reason is because if you're not a licensed clinician, you don't have the training in order to do stuff.

That's not to say that you can't do things with them, but you don't want to become the crutch that someone goes to. Or accidentally do something harmful too, I would imagine. That could also occur. And so for for this, it's really about sometimes it's just being present with with the individual. And when you can recognize that like, oh, this person needs additional help. Hey, have you thought about going to a therapist? No, no, I don't want to do that.

I think it'd be a good idea for you to go to to a therapist. Got it. And in general, this is just for me, but in general, get you know, gaming or not gaming, what are some best practices that you would recommend for people who are struggling with, you know, emotional hardships, anxiety, depression, that sort of thing? Community is key key for anything. Don't do your best to not isolate yourself.

Find a community, go and be a part of it, whether it's online, whether it's a social group on the outside, it doesn't have to be therapy because things can be therapeutic. Playing games are therapeutic. Going and being in a community, going and playing that top goal Therapeutic playing soccer therapeutic going and on out to eat with your friends

Therapeutic those things are very very important. I think for People to realize it just takes one step in that direction and it makes a world of a difference Love it. Thank you. So we're getting to the end of our time here Dr. Bean and I wanted to end this with a couple of this or that questions. So these are just real quick one-word answers and your answers can be either overrated or underrated. You ready? I'm ready. Okay, journaling. Underrated. Self-help books. Those are kind of middle of the ground. It depends on what your self-help book. Okay, but generally? Generally I think they will bring up a community,

communal aspects you feel connected to them, but I think in some ways that they're a little overrated. Okay, uh crying underrated Cozy games like Animal Crossing Stardew Valley that kind of thing underrated Souls like games love them underrated overrated hate them And I I beat the I'd be Elden ring so many times it was so good so many Yeah, so my butt like I beat Elden Ring so many times. It was so good. So many. Yeah. So my like I beat Elden Ring, but it was a labor of love. Like it was basically I refused to be beaten by this game.

But once I beat it, I was like, I'm never touching that again. My body reacts to those like a like a white blood cell or something that I have, like a physical, physical like resentment towards towards souls like games but I'm glad you like him hey I went bleed the first time and that was the worst decision I could have done that was the hardest beat I had to do in that game what about astrology I think it's overrated overrated AI therapists overrated Uh, what about playing as the villain in video games? Underrated really do you think that there's like uh catharsis there or something? I so uh one of my favorite quotes is you either die the hero or you live long enough to watch yourself become the villain

Okay so Is it better to die the hero or become the villain? I think it's gonna depend on what you need in the moment. Okay. I think, honestly, I think it's an underrated thing that the video game systems and companies that we have, they haven't incorporated like,

you're playing as the villain and yes, you're going to die. You're going to not be able to beat this game because that hero is gonna come back stronger and better Each time but I think it's a very interesting game to play as the villain Without the knowledge that you're there's no way you're gonna win this at the end of it. Hmm fair. Okay, and lastly therapy scenes in movies Underrated is there is there a particular movie or show that you think really gets it right? Oh, Shrinked does an okay job with it. Such an

entertaining show. But I'm gonna let you know those therapist rooms, those are not real. No therapy room is that large. That is crazy. All right that that therapist room in California Just a word because I used to live in California as well That therapist room would cost eight thousand dollars a month for that. There's no way no way In history that those things are real that those things are real. I like the movies for you. Fair enough, that's a little Hollywood magic for ya. Dr. Bean, this has been so awesome and rewarding

to learn a bit more about video games and anxiety, depression, mental health, and importantly about geek therapeutics and what you are doing specifically to help connect people's passions to perhaps some relief in their personal life and in their families. It is awesome to know that guys like you exist and that you are taking such a positive stance on this, you know, really challenging part of just being

human. Where can people get more information on you and on Geek Therapeutics? So they can just go straight to geektherapeutics.com and they will see all of our education, our therapists and everything like that. We do telehealth, we do in-person, so we are readily available. We do psych testing as well. If you're like, I wanna be with someone

who's gonna understand me as I do psych testing, we're the right place to kinda come in and do that. You can also get my parenting book on there of utilizing all the geek culture in and do that. You can also get my parenting book on there of utilizing all the geek culture in your parenting things. What's the name of that book? Checkpoints and Autosaves. Love it, love it, great title.

It can't go wrong with that one. I mean, that was just good. And then before the episode, you were also mentioning that you are also present at a lot of the larger sort of nerd conventions. So you have any coming up that you'd like to mention? Absolutely, we'll be at PAX East, New York City Comic Con, PAX West,

and PAX Unplugged this year. Love it. Again, Dr. Bean, thank you so much for being a part of this show. I have a very, very strong feeling that this is gonna resonate with a lot of people and it's awesome that you took your time to do this. We wanna thank the listeners so much for tuning in.

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we've talked a lot about in this episode of Gamers and you'll get the opportunity to be a part of the discussion of the things that we're talking about in these episodes. That is it for us today everybody thank you very much for your time and until next time happy gaming!