Educational companion dossier · Fact, interpretation, lived experience, clinical education, fiction, and mechanics are labeled separately. Scope & safety
PsychologicalWar.orgPeople before labels.
CLINICAL EDUCATION — NOT DIAGNOSIS

PLAYER WELLBEING & REPRESENTATION

Psychiatric Care Is Not Punishment

A firm design boundary separating mental-health support from detention, criminal status, deception, faction loyalty, dangerousness, and game punishment.

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LEVEL 1

ORIENTATION

Why this matters

CLINICAL EDUCATION — NOT DIAGNOSIS

One-sentence brief

Using a “mental hospital” as a prison or horror penalty reinforces real stigma, confuses healthcare with coercion, and makes diagnosis a proxy for guilt.

REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE

Three key points

  1. Do not use psychiatric diagnosis, treatment history, distress, or unusual beliefs as warrant or loyalty variables.
  2. Use neutral detention settings for rule enforcement; reserve care spaces for voluntary, supportive, confidential functions.
  3. Represent crisis, recovery, rights, and ordinary life without making symptoms a villain mechanic.
LEVEL 2

WORKING BRIEF

Evidence, context, and limits

REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE

Separate three systems

Moderation enforces platform rules. Fictional justice addresses in-world conduct. Mental-health support addresses wellbeing. They may coordinate around immediate safety, but one system must not silently substitute for another.

  • A sanction is not treatment.
  • Treatment is not proof of wrongdoing.
  • Refusing care is not automatically noncompliance with game rules.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE

Language and setting

Avoid “asylum,” “psych ward,” “insane,” or “delusional” as shorthand for evil, unreliability, or punishment. If the fiction includes a care facility, show rights, staff roles, consent limits, ordinary routines, advocacy, and multiple outcomes.

  • Do not use anti-ligature or restraint imagery as entertainment.
  • Do not equate institutional architecture with horror.
  • Consult paid lived-experience reviewers.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE

Voluntary support features

Offer private cooldown spaces, sensory settings, content controls, time reminders, trusted-contact options, account safety tools, and links to appropriate local support information without claiming clinical care.

  • No diagnosis by game telemetry.
  • No health disclosure to factions or employers.
  • No loss of progression for using support tools.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE

Direct safety signals

Respond to explicit threats, self-harm statements, medical emergencies, severe confusion, or immediate danger through platform safety procedures. Do not infer urgency from a label, roleplay theme, or unusual belief alone.

  • Acknowledge distress without confirming unverified claims.
  • Use trained human escalation where available.
  • Respect regional emergency-service differences.
REAL-WORLD INTERPRETIVE

Representation and correction

Clinical, disability, cultural, legal, privacy, and lived-experience review are separate gates. Publish corrections when language or mechanics create stigma or coercive effects.

  • No single reviewer represents everyone.
  • Record unresolved disagreement.
  • Preserve character agency and recovery beyond the episode.
LEVEL 3

COMPLETE DOSSIER

Limitations, game links, and review context

DISPUTED / MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS

Known limitations and gaps

  • The supplied reports are preserved research inputs, not independent proof of every cited case, statistic, legal claim, or product description.
  • Public material abstracts system design and player-protection principles; it omits actionable intrusion, evasion, coercion, targeting, sabotage, or real-person profiling methods.
  • Player behavior, diagnosis, disability, nationality, religion, language, poverty, migration, or social identity are never automatic indicators of guilt, fraud, danger, or disloyalty.
  • Parameters require simulation, accessibility testing, privacy review, regional review, and human playtesting before production use.
LEVEL 4

RESEARCH EDITION

Sources, methods, and stable links

REAL-WORLD VERIFIED

Method and corrections

This page follows the public method for provenance, confidence, source independence, alternative accounts, limitations, review state, and visible correction.

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CONTINUE

Related learning

Learning pathJustice Without StigmaDesign conduct-based consequences, appeals, asset governance, investigations, aftermath, reintegration, and care without diagnosis-based guilt or psychiatric punishment.