When someone's doing something new in terms of psychotherapy or mental health support,

we here at the show get intrigued.

For instance, we heard about mental health support groups for people who are playing video games while in the group sessions.

And we were like, what?

Let's check that out for the show.

It's Depression Mode. I'm John Moe. I'm glad you're here.

The video gaming world is not just about the playing of games anymore. It's a social space, a community space, a space where people can sometimes find their people a lot easier than in the purely physical world.

I don't even want to say the real world, because to a lot of gamers, the world of pixels is just as real as the world of Adams, sometimes more so.

Hero Journey Club is a business that offers mental health support groups for video game

enthusiasts. The groups are run by therapists. The group sessions happen over the online voice

and instant messaging platform Discord, and the participants, the gamers, are playing games while the

sessions take place, sometimes collaboratively on the same game, sometimes on completely

different games. So what's the benefit of playing video games as you open up about mental

health issues? We called up the CEO and co-founder of Hero Journey Club.

Brian Chor, welcome to Depression Mode.

Awesome. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here. So let's make sure that everybody understands what happens here. I sign up for Hero Journey Club. What happens to me when I log on? What exactly goes down?

So you go through a series of onboarding steps for us to get to know you, understand what you're

looking for in terms of mental health, and we'll match you to a group that is working on the same

mental health challenges in the same life stage, working on, let's say, like, themes of depression

or anxiety or addiction, and then play the same games and meet the same time, and then you will match

you to that

group with the journey guide who is a therapist who is either a master's or doctorate in

...