Mental Health Stigma Addressed By Cloud9

Mental health is a topic in Esports. Twitch streamers and other pro players across the gaming world shared their thoughts and experiences with mental health professionals and said that every team and organization should hire personal therapists, performance coaches, and fitness trainers to support their players. One of the famous organizations is called Cloud9.

This organization is doing those kinds of treatments to help and support their players. They also plan to train moderators on their official Twitch channels to combat stigmatizing language in the chat and to promote honest discussions about mental health.

Cloud9 and health company Kaiser Permanente partnered up to help their players.

Dr. Don Mordecai, Kaiser Permanente’s National Leader for Mental Health and Wellness made a comment about the current situation of mental health in the United States. He described it as discouraging. Kaiser Permanente partnered up with Cloud9 to put the initiative into work.

“Less than half of people who have a mental health condition, and that certainly includes children (and) adolescents, get any treatment at all and way less than half get an evidence-based, outcomes-based kind of treatment,” Dr. Mordecai said. 

Mordecai talks about the issue of social pressure in the country. He tends to explain that many people prefer to be quiet than to share with other people what they feel because of the fear that they will come off as weak and as attention seekers. This kind of stigma is toxic and he wants to change that kind of attitude.

Cloud 9’s moderator system is trained to recognize words and phrases that might seem foul and negative comments around mental health. If a viewer commits these negative stigmas they will face a minor offense to major offense. Moderators will explain to you in a private message about what you’ve done and you will temporarily receive a timeout notice, while a major offense will lead you to ban and permanent exile from the channel.

Etienne said; “There’s always going to be that very vocal minority who’s going to be really angry about it, but I think we’re going to be able to filter out those people eventually”.

“Just because people may not like it doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing”.

If this new implementation will be effective, maybe other organizations will do the exact same thing to help their players and viewers.