Eve Zarah, Turner Martin, Di Basilio Daniela, Harkin Benjamin, Yates Alan, Persson Sofia, Henry John, Williams Ashley, Walton Geoff, Jones Marc V, Whitley Charlotte, Craddock Nathan
Department of Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK.
Division of Psychology and Mental Health, School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
Clin Psychol Psychother. 2023 Nov 28. doi: 10.1002/cpp.2938.
The development of serious games for mental wellbeing is a topic of growing interest. The increase in acceptance of games as a mainstream entertainment medium combined with the immersive qualities of games provides opportunities for meaningful support and intervention in mental wellbeing.
We conducted a systematic review and exploratory meta-analysis to examine if aspects of the interventions influenced outcomes as measured via overall effect sizes. We employed a multilevel meta-analytic approach to accommodate the interdependency of effect sizes (18 effect sizes from 14 studies, with 2027 participants).
Overall, the main effect for gaming interventions on any outcome variable was small to medium sized, d = .35 (confidence interval [.23, 47], p < .001). Results revealed that the only significant moderator was the nature of the intervention. Specifically, only interventions that included a rational emotional behavioural focus significantly predicted an improvement in depression and/or anxiety in participants.
The findings reveal promising effects for therapeutic games for mental health, but replications are needed, alongside the addressing of methodological and procedural concerns.
开发用于促进心理健康的严肃游戏是一个日益受到关注的话题。游戏作为主流娱乐媒介的接受度不断提高，再加上游戏的沉浸式特质，为在心理健康方面提供有意义的支持和干预创造了机会。
我们进行了一项系统综述和探索性元分析，以检验干预措施的各个方面是否会影响通过总体效应量衡量的结果。我们采用多层次元分析方法来处理效应量的相互依赖性（来自14项研究的18个效应量，涉及2027名参与者）。
总体而言，游戏干预对任何结果变量的主要效应为小到中等规模，d = 0.35（置信区间[0.23, 0.47]，p < 0.001）。结果显示，唯一显著的调节变量是干预的性质。具体而言，只有那些包含理性情绪行为重点的干预措施才能显著预测参与者的抑郁和/或焦虑状况有所改善。
研究结果揭示了治疗性游戏对心理健康有积极作用，但需要进行重复研究，并解决方法学和程序方面的问题。
