The documentary escape game She Could Fly aims to educate around obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Sara Kenney and Mairéad Ruane from the game’s creative team spoke with People First Radio.
“It was such a cool experience like to see how creatively such difficult experiences could be shown and conveyed to people without the experience [of OCD], but also people with the experience who’ve played it and felt really seen.” said Ruane.
Ruane, who has OCD, says there’s widespread misunderstanding of the condition.
“Before I even realized myself I had it, I thought of it as well, like it’s quite a trivial thing, something to do with like cleanliness and tidiness,” they said. “When I realized that what I’d been struggling with, these distressing intrusive thoughts, and lots of mental compulsions..like rumination, thinking over past events, seeking reassurance from people, reassurance on the internet, researching things in order to quell these anxieties, once I realized that that was all OCD, I was so gobsmacked because I thought it was, you know, this trivial kind of personality quirk.”
“When you realize what it is, especially if you have it like me, then you’re like, ‘oh, I need to educate people. I need other people that were suffering in silence like myself to know what it is,'” they said. “It’s really misunderstood and that’s deeply worrying and harmful to people.”
Ruane says they want people to understand the cycle of OCD.
“Everybody experiences intrusive thoughts. So just experiencing intrusive thoughts doesn’t mean you have OCD, that just means you’re a human with a brain,” they said.
“But if you experience anxiety in response to it…there’s often a compulsion that even if you can’t recognize it,..it’s not always tapping and cleaning your hands and things like that, although it can be, excessive handwashing can be a response to, an intrusive thought about whether you’ve caught a disease that’s then going to kill your children or something.”
“But it’s never about, ‘oh, let me just clean because that’s fun and I quite like cleaning.’ When the cleaning comes, it’s probably about huge kind of distressing topics and consequences that you believe are going to happen.”
Kenney says She Could Fly isn’t a difficult game to jump into.
“you don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy this game,” she said.
Ruane said it’s the first game they’ve played and the experience was very accessible.
“It could be really really great for lots of people, so I would encourage everyone to play and also to seek support if you are struggling with those intrusive thoughts, or images, and compulsions, mental or physical.”
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