Google removes "Doki Doki Literature Club" from Google Play

There's not much additional context here because avoidant behavior is basically universally understood to be a bad thing when it comes to the long term treatment of PTSD (this is separate from immediately/short-term after the event - different situation there) - there's no real serious argument against this idea, so when avoidant behavior is discussed it doesn't require context on why that behavior is a bad thing, in the same way that a an article targeted at cardiologists isn't going to explain why poor ejection fraction is an issue - it's baseline knowledge for the target audience.

The results are mixed on whether it encourages avoidance - some studies like https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221... indicate that it does, others found no effect or negligible increases.

To be clear, I'm not definitively stating it causes avoidant behavior - I am saying that it might, which would be one of those 'worst case' scenarios.

Trauma groups have been part of the meta-analysis that indicate no real change in avoidance, and some have had the 'forbidden fruit' impact even in trauma groups, but it's in similar quantities as the ones that show an increase in avoidant behavior.

Fundamentally, trigger warnings just don't make a lot of sense to try and argue in favor of from a 'helping people with their PTSD' standpoint if you believe the science.

1) For them to have the effect you claim is desirable, they would need to avoid the content - but avoidant behavior is a negative when it comes to overcoming PTSD

2) The science largely indicates that it doesn't cause them to change their behavior at all in this manner - so the desired effect, it doesn't seem to do anything.

3) There's some evidence that it might increase avoidant behavior (science would call this bad!) and some evidence it might increase people exposure due to the 'forbidden fruit' effect (which would be bad from the supposed desired effect, and not necessarily good from the scientific standpoint - unnaturally being pushed towards something might also be negative vs. more 'natural' exposure, particularly when coupled with the upcoming point)

4) A variety of studies have shown that they increase anticipatory anxiety in people when they appear, which is of course a negative for anyone. I haven't been able to find any studies particularly engaging on this specific topic of anticipatory anxiety from trigger warnings + follow up exposure from the 'forbidden fruit' effect so this isn't something backed by science like the rest, but my gut instinct is that it would be more likely to be negative vs. something more organic. I could very well be wrong there.

I don't see any combination of piecing together these studies that could lead to a belief that trigger warnings provide value from a therapeutic standpoint.

For me it's not even really political - I certainly am not aligned with the "heterodox" community that has been so actively against them. I think if people want to put trigger warnings on things, they should be able to make that choice, and people should be able to abide by them if they think they want to as well.

The issue is how it is framed as being important for helping people heal, like several people have spoken of it being important for in this thread. And I don't think the game/movie ratings ever really purported to be a part of that - indeed, it's always been more of an age appropriateness thing from my understanding.

If all of this was just "People should be able to make informed choices about the content they consume" and no one on any side was making claims about the mental health benefits for people with PTSD or similar, I think it would be a nonissue.

> Basically, if you have anything like PTSD, you need an actual therapist not the collective hivemind of twitter (instagram these days?).

100%. Far far far more likely to get through it and overcome the trauma with a good professional guiding you through the process. Social media is just going to have you doing silly things like writing gr@pe or gr*pe as if somehow using a euphemism that you already map back to the original word is helping and it wasn't originally just trying to get around content filters.