Games for Health - PTSD

Games for Health aims to test and combine technologies and concepts from computer games and e-learning in treatment methods in the health area. As a unique, innovative step, the project intends to involve user reactions and behaviour as determining factors in game development. This insight in user behavior will be used to optimize and individualize methods for treatment and learning.

The field of interest of the project is the psychiatric area with a focus on screening, diagnosis and treatment of soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The project has potential with respect to a wide array of groups of people at particular risk of developing PSTD and for this reason may prove to be ground-breaking within the field, according to Peter Treufeldt, deputy director of Mental Health Services of the Copenhagen regional authority.

Through involvement of the newest knowledge about games technology (AI and user behavior), games/play and learning the project partners will develop concrete examples of learning sequences in which the aforementioned technologies are used to optimize processes of screening, diagnosis, treatment and learning. In this process, experience and research results regarding traumatology and behavioral psychology will be used. Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen is among the world’s leading research centres in regard to affective modelling and creation of dynamic game content.

Therefore, the ITU has a prominent role in the project, in which the Center for Computer Games Research will be responsible for coupling biophysical data from the individual player with in-game data on the player’s behavior within the game itself, so-called gamemetrics.

The matching of biophysical data and gamemetrics offers new knowledge of realtime interaction between user and game which may be used to adapt and individualize the game to the profile of the individual player. In this way, the gaming/learning experience may be optimized in a treatment and/or learning process. This has never been attempted before.