Tulsa hospital using video games to help kids emotionally

By Emma Burch

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    TULSA, Oklahoma (KJRH) — Biofeedback is becoming a practice in many areas of health, especially in mental health, to help get information about a person’s body.

2 News spoke with a therapist at Parkside Psychiatric Hospital and Clinic about using biofeedback with video games to help kids process their emotions.

Biofeedback is a type of mind-body technique you use to control some of your body’s functions, such as your heart rate, breathing patterns and muscle responses, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The “Mighty Makers” program is designed for families with children ages five through 12 to have free, weekly visits with a therapist to help kids manage their emotions with family support.

Denise Gogolin, the program’s therapist, says the biggest challenge for families is when kids do not know what they are feeling.

“We talk about how important anger is and how big our emotions are. They are important in our lives, we need to manage them. So what we want them to do is notice them in their bodies,” Gogolin said.

Parkside is using a program called ‘Mightier,’ a tablet with biofeedback video games to see how the child will handle challenges.

Gogolin says once the feedback starts to see their heart rate rise as the game gets harder, the game alerts both the child and therapist.

“As they play a game, they start to feel more stress and the heart monitor alerts the game,” Gogolin says.

Gogolin says that time and practice with the child on how to take a step back and calm down will help the child in a real-life crisis.

“It’s more than talk therapy, it’s biofeedback, their body is telling them they’re upset…And the biofeedback gives them that visual. So they can see it, and once they start seeing it, they can start feeling it and recognizing it in their body,” said Gogolin.

We reached out to Gogolin to ask how the program’s progress was going, and she told us that even though it’s still early, she and the other therapists are hopeful and already see improvements in their 10 patients. They have 11 new patients signed up for September.

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