Every two years, Take This gives a series of awards to games released in the last two years which represent excellence in compassionate, non-stigmatizing portrayals of mental health themes and mental health challenges. Past winners include Stardew Valley, Celeste, and Psychonauts 2. In 2022, Spiritfarer was the winner of our first-ever, community choice award. This year, we moved beyond video games, and we created duplicate categories (Community Choice and Judges’ Choice) for tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs)! You can learn about the judging panels and award categories here and about all of the game finalists here.
Immense gratitude and thanks to our sponsors Sony and Ubisoft, and thank you to our award presenters: Tanya DePass, Marisha Ray, Alexa Ray Corriea, and Samantha Béart!
Now, let’s get to our winners! Every one of these games is a wonderful example of compassionate mental health representation, and all of them are worth a play!
You can view the winners in the announcement videos for each category below:
Mental Health in Game Awards 2024 Winners
Mental Health in Game Awards 2024 Finalists
How were the finalists and winners chosen?
Earlier this year, Take This asked the community to submit their favorite games which represented mental health themes or topics in a compassionate and non-stigmatizing manner. Each game nominated was assigned a weighted score based on how each person ranked it in their nomination. The top scores were the finalists in the video game and TTRPG categories, and the top scorer in each is the 2024 Community Choice winner.
Over the summer, the Take This Mental Health in Game Awards committees of experts and luminaries from around the game industry – none of whom work for Take This, to avoid any potential conflicts of interest – had the opportunity to individually, independently review their respective finalists, thanks to the publishers/developers generously providing game codes. Each committee member selected their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-place winners,and based on a weighted score of their ranked choices, we obtained our 2024 Judges’ Choice winners!