Some time ago when we were in initial conversations for this website, I made the off-hand comment, “I’m a fan of mental health.” I really didn’t think it was anything more than just a witty way to affirm the mission of the website, but Mike and Jessica both were very interested to hear (or read) what I had to say on that topic.
So I guess the thing to do is start at the beginning. I have not been diagnosed with anything. I feel like I may have some kind of attention deficit and my wife is of the opinion that I might be on the autism spectrum, but no medical professional has ever evaluated me. I have been in long term relationships with people with depression and/or anxiety. I’ve been friends with people who have since been diagnosed with different mental health conditions. I’ve gamed with these people. I’ve lived with them. I’ve dealt with things on a day-to-day basis. It can be a stressful thing. I’m fairly confident that these conditions contributed to the end of some of these relationships.
I’m also a person experiencing some chronic physical illnesses. Nothing too serious, thank you for asking, but they do affect my daily life in different ways. My daily life was better before I had these conditions (or before I knew I had them) so, there is health as opposed to illness, and I’m a fan of health.
So, I am a fan of mental health in the same sense. And just like physical ailments, sometimes there’s a cure (well okay, maybe not), but more often there’s maintenance medication, and even then, sometimes you use coping mechanisms. That’s what this site is all about.
We’ll talk about the coping mechanisms people use to deal with their own mental health issues and we’ll talk about the coping mechanisms we use to deal with our friends and family with mental health issues. Because in the end, we all just want to have fun.
And since we’re gamers, we won’t limit ourselves to just the mental health aspects. We’ve got projects in the hopper for how to be a better GM, how to modify games systems to customize them for your gaming style, etc. And we might even talk a little about how gaming helps us cope in real life.
Finally, we’ve specified one game system and one condition for our title, but we’ve got experience with and expertise in all kinds of games and conditions. So Welcome!