Gaming, Community and Support: Exploring the potential therapeutic benefits of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and the impact of these on neurodiverse adults

Project Code: TIGCDD- 39747445

Project Description:

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is social group role-playing game, that allows individuals to develop and play as characters and engage in storylines and quests. This offers a structured social situation, that involves clear rules as well as opportunities for role playing. This has a lot in common with other forms of alternative therapy such as play therapy or psycho-drama, often used with children and young adults. This potentially means that D&D might have potential therapeutic benefits.

This PhD will examine the potential therapeutic impact D&D gaming experiences, and involvement in the wider D&D community might have on neurodiverse (ND) individuals. The PhD will explore the impact this has on individuals with a diagnosis of, or identifying as having traits, of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) or Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in comparison to neurotypical (NT) individuals without these conditions.

ND and NT individuals will be interviewed about their experiences, and perceptions of the impact of D&D on their behaviour and well-being. Over the course of the PhD active D&D gaming groups will be observed during their normal sessions to analyse their behaviour. This will be further supported by the measuring of their well-being and other measures of mental health before starting D&D, during and after, to ascertain whether there is any measurable impact of D&D. This will allow the PhD to determine whether D&D has potential therapeutic benefits that could be used to treat and support those with ASC or ADHD.

Anticipated Findings:

To date, there is no manualised approach for counsellors and psychotherapists to provide D&D and similar RPGs as a legitimate therapeutic intervention (Henrich and Worthington, 2023). The research around D&D to date does not yet discuss with any depth, the therapeutic benefits (Baker et al., 2022). What has yet to be established is the specific impact of D&D, therapeutic or otherwise, on adults with ASC and/or ADHD traits and diagnoses. This proposed PhD could be the first of its kind to do so.

This PhD would provide the missing data required to develop D&D as an effective psychological tool to support ND adults in many areas of their psychological development and journey to individuation. Likewise the same could be applied to how the space and community within D&D may provide positive scaffolding and support to ND individuals.

In addition, by examining through the lens of humanistic-existential psychotherapy theories, this PhD could directly lead to the development of a training programme for counsellors and psychotherapists to deliver D&D as a psycho-intervention for adults. The proposed PhD would provide both quantitative evidence and context for any potential impact of D&D settings, whilst the qualitative exploration would provide further detail about how that may work (if at all), and the processes involved for individuals who may feel a benefit to taking part and participating in such spaces.

Contact (and Director of Studies for this project): Dr Eveleigh Buck-Matthews, Eveleigh.Buck-Matthews@bcu.ac.uk

How to apply

To apply for this project, visit the 'How to Apply' section on the Social Sciences PhD course page.