Take This and the Games and Online Harassment Hotline, two mental health organizations serving the game industry, are teaming up to collaboratively support the mental health of PAX East 2023 attendees, vendors, and staff. Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, you’ve experienced harassment or assault, need a compassionate ear, or you just break from things, both the AFK Room and Games and Online Harassment Hotline will be providing support. The partnership means there will be in-person and text support all weekend!
Since Take This created the AFK Room at PAX East 2014, it has offered a tranquil space that provides non-therapeutic empathic listening and general, mental health education. To kick off this new partnership, Take This has added several new educational articles related to convention wellness, authored by experts in psychology and medicine. This includes educational articles on common strategies in preventing con crud, how to handle overwhelm, dealing with harassment, dealing with con crash, and how to thrive at conventions instead of just getting through them!
Our friends at the Games and Online Harassment Hotline – who offer free, confidential, text-based emotional support to anyone who makes or plays games – have extended their hours and tailored their text-based support services specifically to serve those in attendance at PAX East.
The Take This AFK Room is located in room 251 at PAX East and is open during the convention from 10am – 7pm Thursday through Saturday, and from 10am – 4pm Sunday. Take This’ convention mental health articles can be found on our website at TakeThis.org, and other free, mental health resources can be found at TakeThis.org/resources.
From March 23rd – 26th, the Games and Online Harassment Hotline is open from 10am to 10pm Eastern Time. You can reach out anytime, and they’ll get back to you once they open! Text PAX to 23368 to get connected via SMS. Click the WhatsApp button on gameshotline.org to message them there.
From March 27th – 31st, the Hotline is keeping the PAX keyword live to support folks dealing with con crash or any other ripple effects after attending the convention. They will be online from 6pm – 10pm (Eastern Time) those days.
Both Take This and the Games and Online Harassment Hotline look forward to supporting our game community both during PAX East and in the future!