Hellblade and Mental Illness: Study of awareness and representation of mental illnesses through video games

Lately, mental illness is a very recurring resource in cultural media, however, not everyone treats it properly, not carrying out an investigation or exposing the diseases as an aesthetic disqualification of the individual.

A game that surprised in the great representation it made about schizophrenia is Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. From this fact, the most relevant mental illnesses are explored to establish a base and study how other media have previously represented them, such as cinema, music, art or comics. In addition to Hellblade other video games had explored mental illnesses, however, not all of them do it properly and are usually independent games, leaving as result a lack of confidence in this medium that shows itself shy and usually fails when trying to treat these themes seriously. 

From this, Hellblade is analyzed, following the MDA model, that is, Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics, meanwhile the components of the game are related to the central theme, seeing what their strengths are when it comes to treating schizophrenia and demonstrating that video games can get to report in an outstanding way on a subject as serious as this. 

The results of a survey show the opinion of 92 people regarding how different mediums treat mental illnesses and how they are shown in Hellblade, showing the reality of studies today. As a result of this work, the reader should be able to establish a general knowledge on the field of mental illnesses in order to understand the use that has been made of these in other means that are not video games and how they infect the video game, with the exception of Hellblade that breaks with the traditional use of mental illnesses in cultural media, getting a hybrid between traditional games and serious games.

Keywords: Cultural Media, Hellblade, MDA, Mental illness, Schizophrenia, Serious games, Survey, Video games.

The authors are Jorge Alcañiz Roda, Álvaro Rafael Aparicio García, Alejandro Martínez Silva, Héctor Lotero Torres, Alejandro Ortega Márquez, Oscar Recio Crespo.

Check their itch.io out! 

https://alvaro-aparicio.itch.io/

The software used: Microsoft Word.

*The document is written in Spanish.*