A MORTICIAN'S TALE + Mental Health | Video Games & Death Anxiety
Channel: Screen Therapy
Date: 12/10/2019

Can thinking about death be good for us? Are we ready for a game about Death Positivity?? This game might be easy, technically, but offers its real challenge inside our minds and hearts. A modern Memento Mori.

"Let's Experience" Let's Play Series Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kBRb...

This playthrough focuses on how playing this calm, somber game about being a funeral director and encountering death on a daily basis can help us confront and cope with our death anxiety. I reflect on my own experiences with death and the industry and find it something like exposure therapy - rousing and then easing my anxiety in one gaming session.

If you don't have high death anxiety then this game is an oasis to quietly and meaningfully contemplate death without social pressure to stop and change the subject. 

This is a safe virtual/mental space about the realities around death that we don't think about, but probably should. It eases our fears and kindly educates us - it could be a useful part of a Emotional Intelligence curriculum about death. (A thought to keep for when society is ready to consider games emotionally educational.......)

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Game:

A Mortician's Tale (2017) by Laundry Bear Games

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Sources:

Farley G.: Death anxiety. National Health Service UK. 2010, found in: Peters L, Cant R, Payne S, O'Connor M, McDermott F, Hood K, Morphet J, Shimoinaba K (2013)  

Hall, A. E. (2016). PERSONALITY, MEDIA, AND WELL-BEING. The Routledge Handbook of Media Use and Well-Being: International Perspectives on Theory and Research on Positive Media Effects. 

Khoo, G. S. (2016). Contemplating tragedy raises gratifications and fosters self-acceptance. Human Communication Research, 42(2), 269-291.

Niemiec, C. P., Brown, K. W., Kashdan, T. B., Cozzolino, P. J., Breen, W. E., Levesque-Bristol, C., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). Being present in the face of existential threat: the role of trait mindfulness in reducing defensive responses to mortality salience. Journal of personality and social psychology, 99(2), 344.

Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., Johnson, K. D., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). The appeal of tragedy: A terror management perspective. Media Psychology, 1(4), 313-329.

Bartsch, A., & Hartmann, T. (2017). The role of cognitive and affective challenge in entertainment experience. Communication Research, 44(1), 29-53.

The Order of the Good Death
http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/resources/death-positive-movement#1

Wojtkowiak, Joanna; Rutjens, Bastiaan T. (2011). "The postself and terror management theory: Reflecting on after death identity buffers existential threat". The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. 21 (2): 137–144. doi:10.1080/10508619.2011.557008.

Rieger, D. (2017). Meaning, Mortality Salience, and Media Use. Handbook of media use and well-being. Routledge.


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Music in Order:

Intro: aimless - "long distance"

Outro: VINDELIC - "Rainbow chasers"

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