Utilizing Tabletop RPG to promote wellness and recovery
We are coworkers/friends who are ridiculously excited to teach you how to utilize Tabletop Role Playing Games (RPGs) as a way to break through barriers and improve yours and others’ quality of life-while having fun!
Our mission is to educate individuals, schools, and programs on how to effectively utilize Tabletop RPGs to promote wellness and recovery by teaching Game Masters (GMs) to assist their players in processing thoughts and emotions, increasing self-confidence, and promoting self-regulation, through role-play.
Pat Thompson is a group facilitator at a day treatment center in Wisconsin. He has worked in the mental health field for 7 years, running groups and providing one-on-one care. Pat has been playing tabletop RPGs for several years, ever since a former client introduced him to Dungeons and Dragons tabletop RPG. One day, he decided the two things (mental health treatment and tabletop RPGs) didn’t need to be mutually exclusive, and began incorporating treatment topics into tabletop games for the clients. He soon realized the value and benefit this added to the clients’ treatment and the parallels the clients were experiencing between their characters and themselves.
On a personal level, Pat Thompson lives in rural Wisconsin and thoroughly enjoys this lifestyle; coaching high school football, hunting and fishing, as time allows. His all time favorite pastime is spending time and being goofy with his two little kids. However, growing up, life was a little less picturesque due to growing up on the local reservation and falling into an unhealthy crowd of friends with unhealthy interests. However, this has led him to believe in ability to overcome all obstacles that come his way and has also allowed him to better relate and quickly build rapport with the children he works with in the mental/behavioral health field.
Kelsey Kidder is a mental health therapist at a day treatment center in Wisconsin. She has been working in the mental health field for 10 years and has been a therapist for 5 of those years. Kelsey is much newer to tabletop RPGs than Pat, and has only recently started to play. Kelsey saw the value that tabletop RPGs were adding to the client’s treatment and realized that she could not ignore utilizing tabletop RPGs as a way to advance her clients’ treatment.
On a personal level, Kelsey also lives in rural Wisconsin and while she hates the bitter winters, she wouldn’t trade it for the lifestyle or the friends/family the “Northwoods” has provided. Kelsey also runs a fair trade jewelry business out of Uganda, Africa that employs 50 women, so when she’s not spending time with family and friends or at work, you can often find her working to expand this business and planning her next trip to Africa. However, her favorite pastime is spending time with her husband and daughter.