It’s all in your head.

Back in “the day” I used to have a friend who played too much Hitman II. One day he confessed to me that he played so much that when he walked into the mall the first thought he had (however brief) was how he could take out the security guard with piano wire, hide the body, and change into his clothing before being caught. We laughed at that.

When Columbine happenned no one laughed but many blamed video games such as Doom and other First Person Shooters for the massacre. Saying that the misguided students played too many violent games and wrongly influenced those students. I’m not going to take sides here but not every Risk player has gone on to take over the world (and those video game myths were largely debunked (go Wikipedia).

I bring some of this up now because of an episode of Mental (go hulu.com) I saw the other night. It involved a boy so fixated  on video games (the one here looked like World of Warcraft, a little) that made one up in his head just to have something to play when his dad took his games away. The boy then got “addicted” to the game in his head. Unable to distinguish reality from the game he stabbed his mother (and himself?), then ended up in the hospital. Facinating plot. What if EverCrack was in your head and you were addicted? How would that impact your day to day life?

Spoiler Alert (yeah, should have had this before, sorry): In the end the doc’s are able to treat him using medication but the breakthrough is achieved after the boy “wins” the game. To that end I am glad that the show did not ignore the sometimes necessary medications and go straight for the “You Won! You’re Free! Take the Red Pill!” ending. Not saying that Mental is an amazing show but with the occasional episode of House not many shows deal with mental illness and it is good to see one that does (even if the pilot did involve some unnecessary male stripping).