“Sarah Has Died of Dysentery”: What Historically-Informed Gaming Can Teach Us About Medical Trauma

From the games we grew up with like The Oregon Trail, Total War, and Age of Empires series to more recent additions such as Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed, and even Call of Duty: WWII, historically informed video games have the fantastic ability to transport players across time and space to engage meaningfully with historical public narratives. As the world continues to grapple physically and emotionally with the effects of a pandemic, geek therapists are uniquely posed to use these media to help clients process and recover from medical trauma. This presentation will define medical trauma, explore its usage in historically-informed video games, and provide participants concrete tools for application in session.

Learning Objectives:
1. Participants will be able to assess client’s for signs of medical trauma.
2. Participants will be able to analyze portrayals and narratives of medical trauma in historically-informed video games.
3. Participants will be able to demonstrate several interventions for treating medical trauma using examples from historically-informed video games.