Personal Investigator A Therapeutic 3D Game for Adolescent Psychotherapy

Although mental health problems increase markedly during adolescent years, therapists often find it difficult to engage with adolescents. The majority of disturbed adolescents do not receive professional mental health care and of those who do fewer still will fully engage with the therapeutic process (Offer, Howard et al. 1991; US Department of Health and Human Services 1999). Personal Investigator (PI) is a 3D computer game specifically designed to help adolescents overcome mental health problems such as depression and to help them engage more easily with professional mental health care services. PI is an implementation of a new computer mediated model for how therapists and adolescents can engage. The model has its theoretical foundations in play therapy and therapeutic storytelling and applies to these traditional approaches current research on the educational use of computer gaming and interactive narrative systems. Previously demonstrated benefits of computer games and interactive narrative systems in education include increased motivation, increased self-esteem, improved problem solving and discussion skills and improved storytelling skills. PI aims to take advantage of these benefits in a mental health care setting. PI incorporates a goal-oriented, strengths based model of psychotherapy called Solution Focused Therapy. By engaging adolescents in a client-centred way it aims to build stronger therapeutic relationships between therapists and adolescents. It is predicted that the combination of goal-oriented gaming with a model of goal-oriented therapy will help to attract and sustain the interest of adolescents and improve their ability to learn new coping strategies. PI is the first game to integrate this established psychotherapy approach into an engaging online 3D game. Results if trials of PI with four adolescents referred to clinics for issues including anxiety and behaviour problems, attempted suicide, and social skills difficulties are presented.