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Using League of Legends to combat health problems

Swap·7/19/2018, 3:15:32 PM·5 votes·3,291 views

Hi,

My name is Vel. Just like a lot of people who play League, I suffered from really bad depression and anxiety at some point in my life. League was my escape and I used it to keep me alive. League gives you the opportunity to reach goals, get a sense of achievement and attain some kind of social life. For many of us, it can be difficult to even walk outside, but I managed to use League of Legends to move my life forwards. I dropped out of school twice, put on a ton of weight and isolated myself, I won't go into detail why but if anyone can relate they probably already know. I turned things around, studied psychology and tried to understand why I felt the way I did. I've done very well for myself and now I'm going to university to study coaching and management and do what I'm passionate about!

A while ago, I started a discord to meet people similar to me, gamers. League of Legends was naturally the game of choice and I wanted to help others the way I managed to help myself. Now, my discord has over 1000 people.

We are trying to build a safe space within the chaos of the world where League of Legends and mindfulness meet, allowing League of Legends to have a completely positive impact on a person and teaching people to handle the cons such as ranked anxiety and addiction. We are still growing and learning as we go, and we have recently started work on a website.

We would love it if you could come by and have a talk with us! We want to improve and feedback from players is essential.

Everything we do is completely voluntary and free. We use break games to help people untilt and relax such as Minecraft and everything is funded from our own pockets and donations (which are optional, we don't push for them).

We are always here to talk. Most of us are students studying things such as Sports Psychology, Coaching, Sports Science, eSports and more. We want to help.

If you are a player, join here: https://discord.gg/3WCwN8a If you are a coach, join and send a message to Rai. If you want to get involved, join and message Rai too!

We want to raise awareness of the impact that gaming can have on mental health, both positive and negative.

Thank you

27 Comments

Quinzley7/19/2018, 8:01:05 PM5 votes

Define Safe Space.

Voldymort7/19/2018, 3:50:33 PM2 votes

Just like a lot of people who play League, I suffered from really bad depression and anxiety at some point in my life.

Black swan fallacy. Look it up

Don't generalize. Just because most of the people you've met who play league are depressed, it does not automatically mean that a lot of lol players are actually depressed.

Mr Yedi7/20/2018, 6:04:29 PM2 votes

Back on the thread's original subject line, even though I do not play jungle, playing League helped me get over my fear of spiders (thanks Elise). :)

Míellá7/19/2018, 3:48:45 PM1 votes

oof

Thuban7/23/2018, 4:26:55 PM1 votes

This game developed problems for me. First it was depression that almost caused me to permanently lose my account. I cut off ranked, so the depression went away. But now it is mostly hackusation anxiety that I really can't seem to stop now. This has festered into other games I play as well.