The development and design of a serious game intervention
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The development and design of a serious game intervention to support and promote recovery of service users who experience serious mental illness and who are detained under the mental health act
IRAS ID
230636
Contact name
Martin Fitzgerald
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bradford
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 1 days
Research summary
Serious games are activities that enable the leaning of skills that can be applied to real life situations. The aim of this project is to develop a serious game activity to facilitate understanding by people with severe mental health problems of their health challenges and assist their recovery. This will be achieved by increasing the person’s ability to cope with their illness and its resulting stressors through the use of gaming. Improved coping can have a positive impact on prognosis, long-term health and successful community living. The project involves consultation with people who have experienced serious mental illness and with rehabilitation professionals who work with this user group. The study will take place at Pennine Care NHSF Trust at the low secure and step down from secure rehabilitation services.
Separate focus groups to consult with service users and service providers will identify the format, content and structure of a potential game. Iterative development of game models will involve integrating the preferences and views of those who contributed ideas with clinical knowledge and guidelines for knowledge generation and self-care in this user group. A stage one prototype will be developed. This will inform the Technical Team’s development of a game model. This first model will be produced in flash so that people can interact with it. It will then be tested in joint focus groups with people with serious mental illness and rehab professionals to examine its suitability and acceptability of content, format and game dynamics as an activity that could successfully facilitate recovery. In this way, the game’s concept, its design and development will evolve in response to on-going service user and provider input. The output of this project will be a prototype game that can then be used in a larger grant application. The study will take three months.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Bradford Leeds Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/YH/0279
Date of REC Opinion
23 Aug 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion