Treatments for Mental health? How about Administering Video Games?

Video games have come a long way. 20 years ago I fondly remember platforming in titles like ‘Crash Bandicoot’ and ‘Spyro’. Fast forward to today, we have the film-like storytelling in ‘The Last of Us 2’ and community driven games like ‘Among Us’ or ‘Fall Guys’. However, video games haven’t just limited themselves to commercial entertainment, we now see games used in health, education, policy and training.

Video games for other purposes go by different names such as applied games, serious games, persuasive games, games for good, e-learning games... And there are a lot of different words and meanings for these terms. Applied games to me represents games that can be applied to multiple disciplines. Take Animal Crossing as an example, recently referenced in an Oxford study of how play is positively correlated with well-being.

But mental health treatment? This is where my research gets a little more interesting, and challenging. Specifically focusing on fear based disorders like phobias and anxiety, there are growing numbers of young people requiring therapy. A survey by the NHS noted that in 2017, one in eight 5-19 year olds had at least one mental disorder and that number is increaing. In addition, young people without treatment are seven times more likely to develop further mental disorders into adulthood (Neufeld et al. 2017) The problem is the scarcity of resources. There aren’t enough resources, like therapists time and tools, to meet demand for treatment. How can we deliver large scale treatment to young people? There is one way we could, yep you guessed it, applied games.

Graph illustrating the rise in UK young people with mental health related issues, from NHS Survey

The current direction I’m looking into is how we bridge the gap between applied games design and therapy techniques. Game design research has a wealth of models and frameworks for promoting engagement and creating feedback loops to motivate returning play, see Jesper Juul for a breakdown on games. Furthermore, game design research has seen steady involvement in games for education, games for behaviour change and games for health. Sea Hero Quest by Glitchers is an impressive example of how large data gathering through games helped inform research into dementia and mild cognitive impairment. My interest is how games design can be blended, or bridged, with therapy techniques. Taking a technique like exposure therapy where a person with a phobia is gradually exposed to different levels of their fear, and translating the therapy techniques into a digital format that could be used by young people and health professionals.

It is my intention to understand what therapy techniques are currently offered to young people and understand what they do and how they are received. I want to know what existing games have young people with fear based disorders played, what they liked and what they disliked. I’d like to be able to deliver a game that’s well, a game but also a tool for clinicians. Something that can be used to help guidance on future games for treatment but also provide a pathway for the game industry to explore applied games further. After all, games are only just starting to explore other industries.

More about me here. Hi, I’m Michael Saiger, I am a PhD student at the Doctoral Training Centre for Intelligent Games and Games Intelligence (IGGI). As you’ve probably guessed, my research interests are in applied games, games for health and game design methods. You can contact me through twitter @MJSaiger