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Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games

Date Submitted: Aug 10, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 19, 2018 - Oct 14, 2018
Date Accepted: Dec 9, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Acceptability of a Plasticity-Focused Serious Game Intervention for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: User Requirements Analysis

Jones M, Denisova A, Mitchell S, Owen T

Acceptability of a Plasticity-Focused Serious Game Intervention for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: User Requirements Analysis

JMIR Serious Games 2019;7(2):e11909

DOI: 10.2196/11909

PMID: 30990461

PMCID: 6488951

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

Acceptability of a Plasticity-Focused Serious Game Intervention for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: User Requirements Analysis

  • Matthew Jones; 
  • Alena Denisova; 
  • Stephen Mitchell; 
  • Tom Owen

Background:

Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) is a first-line treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite a solid evidence base, TF-CBT response and attrition rates vary considerably. Plasticity-focused interventions, including the use of serious games, have the potential to improve TF-CBT response and treatment retention.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to assess the acceptability of a mobile phone–delivered plasticity-focused serious game to improve response to TF-CBT for PTSD, and carry out a user requirements analysis should the development of a prototype be warranted.

Methods:

We conducted 2 one-to-one interviews (n=2), one focus group involving service users who had received a diagnosis of PTSD (n=3) and one focus group involving psychological trauma service clinicians (n=4).

Results:

We found that the concept of a plasticity-focused mobile phone intervention for PTSD is acceptable to patients and clinicians. Service users and clinicians both believed that the usage should be guided by a therapist, and both contributed useful inputs regarding the audiovisual aspects of the proposed serious game. It was accepted that the game would not be suitable for all patients and that clinicians would need to appropriately prescribe the usage of the game.

Conclusions:

The findings highlight the acceptability of the proposed serious game and clarify the user requirements for such an intervention. It is the intention of the authors to carry out a user experience evaluation using a prototype serious game in a clinical population.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Jones M, Denisova A, Mitchell S, Owen T

Acceptability of a Plasticity-Focused Serious Game Intervention for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: User Requirements Analysis

JMIR Serious Games 2019;7(2):e11909

DOI: 10.2196/11909

PMID: 30990461

PMCID: 6488951

Per the author's request the PDF is not available.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.