Minecraft and Mental Health at WellPower

Bringing Video Games to Mental Health Care

At WellPower, one of our guiding principles is to provide person-centered care. Part of this means meeting people where they are, often by physically going to their location. By doing so, therapists provide a powerful foundation to help the people they serve feel seen, understood and accepted, all vital for recovery.

Our child therapists are taking this hallmark of care to a whole new level - meeting the youth they serve digitally by holding sessions within the world’s most popular video game, Minecraft.

Curious about accessing services for your minor child (ages 6 to 17) through our Minecraft program? Call us at (303) 504-7900 to get started.

Transforming Mental Health Care, One Block at a Time

We know that working with children on their mental health requires different approaches than connecting with adults. Kids communicate best through their common language: play.

Historically, that meant playing with kids in person to better understand what was happening in their inner worlds. However, the COVID-19 pandemic required that WellPower's child therapists get creative with how to engage kids in their own worlds, not just through telehealth sessions on Zoom.

Through that creativity, WellPower's Minecraft program was born. The program has built a highly-developed world in Minecraft, complete with replicas of the Dahlia Campus for Health & Well-Being building and gardens, spaces for different ages, multiple therapy groups and opportunities for "traditional" mental health treatments.

Some of the ways that the Minecraft program helps youth are:

Managing social anxiety
Creating peer-to-peer collaboration
Facilitating creativity and self-expression
Groups offering more "traditional" forms of mental health care

Award-Winning Mental Health Care

In 2025, Braulio Rivera, LPC, won WellPower's Mary Frances McMahon Award. Rivera was one of the pioneering clinicians who created the Minecraft program and has facilitated its growth over the past five years.

This award is given to a clinician who embodies the mission, vision and guiding principles at WellPower. Rivera is well-known for how he excels as a therapist, leading innovative Minecraft groups for youth and supporting families and teammates alike with dedication and creativity. He mentors peers, fosters a welcoming and fun environment and ensures groups are accessible in both Spanish and English.

Rivera and others in WellPower's Minecraft program are ready to provide mental health care to Denver's kids and teens. Give us a call to learn more.

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WellPower's Minecraft Program is in the News

WellPower's Minecraft program has recently been featured in multiple news outlets, including Colorado's FOX 31 (right) and MindSite News.

Check out this excerpt from MindSite News' article, Minecraft Opens Powerful New World for Child and Teen Therapy:

Indeed, Rivera was immediately struck by how much harder it was for his young patients to open up on a screen, especially in group therapy. Like other therapists across the country, he found that without an in-person connection, many of his young clients become withdrawn, squirming in their seats, turning off the webcam or muttering “everything’s fine” to questions about how things were going. It was discouraging.

But not long afterwards, he was on a Zoom call with an 11-year-old client who had sought solace in Minecraft, a video game that allows players to explore and build virtual three-D worlds. The boy invited him to a Minecraft session and soon began talking about how lonely he was. It was an epiphany, and Rivera began developing a Minecraft world for group therapy sessions within the game.

The idea was an immediate hit. Minecraft therapy quickly became enormously popular with his patients and with other kids and teens in the clinic’s online therapy program, Rivera says, with the young patients literally counting the days until their next session.

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