CheckPoint is a non-profit organisation focusing on promoting mental health awareness and positive practices in the gaming community, which we have introduced previously in Checking In With CheckPoint. On Monday, they released the first of their web series, diving deep into the the nature of gaming and its varied positive and negative effects on mental health.
Last year the team at CheckPoint launched their Kickstarter to fund the series. As with all aspects of the organisation, this endeavor is funded by the very community it proudly supports, successfully raising well above the goal thanks to close to a thousand backers. Since then they have been working continuously to produce the best series they can to tackle what is a tricky and often stigmatized subject.
This first episode, “Intro to Mental Health!”, now available on the CheckPoint YouTube channel and Steam focuses on covering the basics, breaking some of the myths about mental health, and providing “hacks” to find and be helped by the proper treatment for those dealing with mental health issues.
Welcome to The Checkpoint series; tackling mental health issues using the power of video games – Dr Jennifer Hazel, CheckPoint founder
I’m excited and honoured to be a part of this project. I see it helping to correct a lot of misunderstandings and address the stigma of mental illness and if helps just one person get the help they need, it’ll be worth it. It’s important for people to know that they’re not alone, and that there is help out there. – Dr Shelley Xia, Director
Episodes of the series are part discussion on mental health, part interview series with prominent members of the gaming industry, and part examination of games themselves and how they either promote or negate mental well-being. Two episodes per week are being released for the next nine weeks and cover subjects such as characters with mental health issues, addiction, mental health for the games industry and the representation of mental illness in gaming.
Launching the first episode was always going to be something extremely special, yet I was still blown away by the amount of love and support we got for it. Mental health is a topic that means something to so many people, and I love that I can help spread messages of positivity from this wonderful series. – Pritika Sachdev, Community and Social Media Manager
More information about the CheckPoint series can be found at their website.
To keep up with all the latest on the CheckPoint series itself, as well as behind the scenes footage, and other related material head over to the YouTube channel or Steam page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE75R-E5N-8
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