Pseudo-Counselling Interviews and “Area-of-Effect” Healing: A Thematic Analysis of Healthy Gamer Interviews as a Form of Mental Health Intervention (Interview Mechanisms)

Despite increasing awareness of the negative impacts that poor mental health can have on individuals and society, demand for psychotherapeutic services vastly outstrips provision. Digital-interventions may be one way to help meet demand through offering increased accessibility, and lower-cost solutions. For example, HealthyGamerGG is an online organisation produces pseudo-counselling interviews i.e., long-format discussions between a trained-psychiatrist and interviewee using therapeutic methods on popular video-streaming platforms (Twitch, YouTube). Using data collected from HealthyGamerGG’s platforms on Reddit and YouTube, this study takes a critical-realist, inductive thematic-analysis approach to investigate viewers’ perceptions of potential mechanisms for change in pseudo-counselling interviews. This study found that viewers, through resonance with the content, experienced personal transformation and psychotherapeutic effects, acting as a supplement, alternative or catalyst for therapy. This study is the first to investigate this format of intervention by HealthyGamerGG and suggests a fuller evaluation is warranted, given the apparent therapeutic benefit and large population utilising these videos. The effectiveness of internet-mediated research compared to interviews/focus-groups for producing high-quality responses is also examined.