MEDIA REPRESENTATION

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
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Senua's Sacrifice is a video game developed by Ninja Theory and made in collaboration with Paul Fletcher (Professor of Health Neuroscience at Cambridge) in order to attempt and portray mental disorders with accuracy.

The game follows a Celtic warrior named Senua around the 9th century Viking invasion. This warrior begins to suffer from hallucinations (as evidenced in the images above) after a plague wiped out her village, and delusions about her lover's soul being tortured in Helheim (hell). This hero embarks on a journey to hell to free her lover's soul, defeat the darkness that lies within her, and find a way to cope with her own psychotic symptoms.

The creators of the game tried their best at portraying these symptoms accurately by working with Fletcher and patients with Schizophrenia that gave them feedback on the creative process. Fletcher said: "I was contacted by Ninja Theory who told me that they were making a game in which the central character experienced hallucinations. They said that they were aware that this was sensitive subject and they wanted to make sure that they were faithful in representing such experiences. Since a lot of my research involves trying to discover the psychological mechanisms involved in hallucinations and other symptoms of mental illness, I was intrigued." Additionally, product development manager, Dom Matthews expressed his intention to avoid the tropes of psychological media portrayals such as this one: "In movies and games, mental illness is often treated as a surprise reveal, reinforcing the idea that there is a clear line between reality and madness. In other cases, psychosis is confused with psychopathy and results in negative portrayals that aren't helpful," Matthews says. "[For Hellblade,] we have been researching the condition for over a year to understand how the mind perceives and makes sense of the world and how this manifests in cases of mental illness," he continues. "You are in the shoes of a character who is strong and aspirational and is [also] dealing with her own unique perspective of reality." "I have had a sense throughout that the team at Ninja Theory don't want to sensationalise or misrepresent this," adds Fletcher. "They want to make a highly-engaging game, of course, but not at the expense of being as accurate and sensitive as they can be." "Senua, who is deeply unsure about what is real, may offer new perspectives on what it might be like trying to make sense of conflict and ambiguity," he continues. "In this respect, I think that the fact that the player is actively participating in the process of learning and exploration offers some really interesting opportunities, rather than simply being a passive observer of someone else's difficulties."

The team was also careful not to apply contemporary diagnostic criteria to the character, since the Celts had a very unique way of understanding mental disorders. According to the Celts, "madness" was encompassed by hallucinations (mostly auditory), isolation, and a quest in search for redemption. These three symptoms can be related back to the symptoms found in schizophrenia: hallucinations are part of the diagnostic criteria, isolation is common among individuals with the disorder, and a quest in search for redemption could very well be caused by delusions of grandeur.

In general terms, the game makes an accurate portrayal of the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, but it is also careful not to categorize it under contemporary definitions of the disorder because of the big historical and cultural gap. The game, however, does exaggerate on a few aspects of the disorder since the hallucinations that Senua suffers from quite literally take her to a different world (Helheim). Regardless, the game does a great job at introducing a sensitive topic by involving people with knowledge of the disorder, and by using an outlet that reaches a wide audience: video games.

Now that you, the reader, have access to information about Schizophrenia, you can judge the game yourself and support the creators of this product.

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Ratings:

Steam: 9/10

IGN.com: 9/10

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Interview by Wired:

Kamen, Matt. (2015). How 'Hellblade' explores real-life mental health issues. Wired. Retrieved from: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/hellblade-ninja-theory-mental-health