“And so you just slaughter demons? To heavy metal guitar?” asks Patricia Melleher, MD. “That’s good, I guess. I mean, they’re demons, so I guess they deserve it. And you and your mom made up?”
There isn’t a section for satiating your deep-rooted rage from childhood through demon slaughter in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but maybe there ought to be, as Melleher can’t help but recognize that it hasn’t not helped.
“Honestly, we weren’t really making much progress in the first few sessions, which can happen when a patient finds it hard to open up to their therapist,” Melleher tells Nerfwire in a clear violation of the patient-doctor confidentiality precedent set forth in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). “Sometimes when someone has a problem with the matriarch of the family, they find it hard to share their inner workings with another woman, such as myself. But then he came in on March 21st, and boom—talk about well adjusted.”
No evidence has been linked to violence in video games causing violence in the real world, with most claims of a correlation citing anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately, the same seems to be true here as well, but there’s no mistaking the fact that somewhere between conquering the denizens of hell and face-melting guitar solos, there was a very effective therapeutic nature to Doom Eternal’s gameplay.
“Part of me wants to recommend this to other patients, and the other part of me thinks that that’s a really, really terrible idea,” Melleher tells Nerfwire. “This is how these things always go—what makes one person reconnect with their mom makes another person kill four people with used stockings all over the tri-state area before disappearing, sending threatening notes every couple of weeks. The human mind is a fascinating thing. Anyway, how do I play this thing? I haven’t talked to my father in fourteen years.”
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