Matt Walden raises money for Rise Above the Disorder.
Matt Walden raises money for Rise Above the Disorder.
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How suicidal thoughts led Jason Docton to save the lives of at-risk gamers

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 19 min

Jason Docton wanted to help save lives and he thought his path to doing that was through medical school. But that didn’t work out, and yet he still found a path to saving lives — only through the time that he spent playing video games.

Docton’s path shows not only the unpredictability of finding your purpose in life, but also the power of video games when it comes to helping people realize that they’re not all alone.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.