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  • Writer's pictureFrancesca Mazzola

VIDEOGAME THERAPY

Get well Gamers is a charity operating in hospitals all over the UK supporting young patients through their journey. How? Donating videogames and consoles.

White walls, loneliness, and infinite boredom are what describes life in hospitals for children, but some gamers with a big pixeled heart are here for them.

Get Well Gamers is a charity founded in 2013 that is normalising children’s journey in hospitals. Their project is supported by common people wanting to donate their consoles and game titles.

The project is extended to over 200 hospitals around the UK who are giving children a chance to win the Fifa tournament of their lives.

Niain Craw, 27, vice chair at GWG, became part of this multi-player collaboration thanks to a Reddit post and from now on is helping to deliver power up to any child in need. “When I was younger, I spent most of my time in the hospital because of different illnesses and I remember playing Tekken3 on a Ps1, I was very young and very shy. It helped me to get out of my shell because I was good at it and I could share these things with other people,” he says.

Supporting the charity is very easy, in a click it’s possible not only to donate consoles but also helping volunteers to extend storage capacity and deliver more consoles to more children.

The retro or newly released videogames don’t make any difference, but they can deliver quality entertainment to hospitals’ wards — which don’t have enough electronic entertainment for their patients.

Videogames are not a negative way to be entertained but they are a way to develop cognitive and communication skills and they “normalise hospitals because it can be very scary and very lonely for kids,” Craw says.

The number of children in hospitals is increasing year after year, but videogames can really help to deal with stress and most of all games positively impact their quality of life, Psychology Today reports.

Fortnite, Fifa, Sonic and Super Mario are children’s most loved titles and “at the end of the day is something they can rely on,” Craw says.

Get Well Gamers, though, is also a hub for inclusivity and equality, “there’s not a lot of exclusion in videogames they are for everyone and we try to involve everyone. Even children with physical disabilities feel part of it,” Richard Thurborn says. Thurborn is a robotics engineer with a passion for videogames, “Get Well Gamers was linked before with Sony and Microsoft and we have a lot of links with independent producers,” he says.

Great Ormond Street Hospital and Evelina London Children’s hospital are also taking part in helping their little patients having fun and spend a beautiful time being kids.

“There’s the element of palliative care, kids want to play and they recognise that. The sole purpose of this is giving them the possibility to be a kid, develop social skills given that hospitals can be a very lonely place, videogames normalise their lives and we know they work,” remarks Thurborn.

Videogames worked with Ronnie, a child whose life changed in one night. The sugar levels in his blood where excessively high and not because he was eating too many sweets but simply because he has type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes is a condition that causes a high level of glucose (sugar) in the subject’s blood because of the incapacity of the body to produce enough insulin, a hormone that controls blood glucose.

Tears anxiety and confusion poured from his eyes. Continuous blood tests made those days a scary experience, but this didn’t stop him to carry on and accepting the final round.

“When I was there I was so scared, tired, bored and worried but there were also times when I enjoyed myself because the staff was amazing! They were fun and wanted me to get better.


The day I got there they asked me if I liked video games (I really do!) and the next thing I knew they brought me a really old tv and an old Playstation 3,” Ronnie says.

This is what Ronnie wrote on his first blog post for Get Well Gamers and he became an advocate for the other patients in the same ward.

“When you ask Ronnie he will tell you that there were times when he actually enjoyed himself in hospital and I think that is down to the access to games consoles. The experience touched him that much that when he was getting better he decided to start fundraising to buy the children unit a Nintendo switch - that’s how we linked up with Get Well Gamers and he eventually managed to donate 4 switches plus lots of games and accessories,” says Jodie Hearnshaw, Ronnie’s mother.

Jodie has always been conscious of making sure that Ronnie’s time on game consoles is limited to a healthy amount “often getting frustrated that he has been on it too long!” but she is also keen on protecting him from games that aren’t appropriate.

“Although I still feel this way to a certain extent, I am really thankful for the normality these games gave to Ronnie when he was so poorly. I don’t think he would have got through it with a smile on his face without them,” Hearnshaw says.

Videogames helped Ronnie to find positivity even if his illness “will never go away” and help other children like him. A Nintendo Switch changed the way he sees things and the way his parents are guiding him through this journey.

“I can honestly say that having access to the games helped him get through what so far has been the worst experience of his life,” says Ronnie’s mother.

Get Well Gamers is also “developing storage for hospitals because one of the biggest things is theft. What we do is replacing stolen consoles like the ones stolen at the Queen Elizabeth’s in Lewisham,” everything free of charge, Richard Thurborn says. If you want to help instead contributing to despatch consoles around the country you can donate just £5 and give that power-up any child needs.

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