Veronika Brezinka
Psychotherapeutic computer games as a new medium in the treatment of children and adolescents
Authors
Veronika Brezinka (University of Zurich
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Ulrich Götz (Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zurich)
Computer games for children and adolescents have gained negative publicity due to the reported association between intensive gaming and school failure, overweight and aggressive behaviour. However, the innovative potential of computer games tends to be ignored, although so-called serious games have been used successfully to support treatment of children with chronic diseases like asthma, diabetes or cancer.
Surprisingly, up to now computer programmes are rarely used in psychotherapeutic treatment of children and adolescents, whereas the fascination of children by computers is a fact every therapist can testify. In contrast, computer-aided treatments for adults become more and more common. However, developing a computer-aided treatment for children does not simply mean putting a treatment manual on the screen. The challenge is to design serious games that incorporate therapeutic goals and training in various skills. For the development of therapeutic computer games, collaboration between psychotherapists and game designers is mandatory.
We will show several prototypes of therapeutic computer games that have been developed by psychology- and game-design students. Two prototypes integrate interpersonal cognitive problem solving into games for young children, whereas two prototypes integrate social information processing theory into games for older children.
The topic of designing a tool for professionals only or a ‘wellness-game’ for everybody will be discussed.
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Yves Hänggi
Potentials and limits of preventive intervention with new media – examples of parent centered approaches.
Authors
Yves Hänggi (University of Fribourg)
During past years, increasing mechanization enhanced the scientific investigation in parent centered, primary-preventive interventions based on new media (film, CD-ROM, internet). Nevertheless, a gap exists between the spreading of such offers and their scientific evaluation regarding their effectiveness. Broadest evaluated methods are CD-ROM-based trainings for parents, which could achieve high effects. The scientific investigation in internet-based interventions is still at the beginning. Together with abundance of information pages, consulting offers for parents are increasing. Internet-based trainings for parents were conducted only rarely. One example is the Parental Online-Training in coping with stress in the family (www.nofamstress.com). This training consists of four training modules providing information about individual stress, stress in the family, communication, and problem solving. A randomized control study (N=198) could prove positive effects on coping with stress and on a long-term basis an increased individual and family well-being. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of internet-based parental trainings. However, the observed dropout - and other aspects - refers to specific difficulties of interventions with new media. Such difficulties are discussed regarding the method, and in addition, regarding practice as well as the public health policy.
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Birgit Wagner
Internet-based cognitive-behavioural interventions: Efficacy and future perspectives
Authors
Birgit Wagner (University of Zurich)
Over the last few years the Internet has become a tool that demonstrates new possibilities and developments in psychotherapy. The anonymity of the Internet enables especially traumatized people who suffer of feelings of guilt and shame to disclose painful and shameful details more easily. As an example of a successful application of an Internet-based treatment a randomized controlled trial for a cognitive-behavioural intervention for complicated grief will be presented. The study investigates the effects of an Internet-based cognitive-behavioural treatment for complicated grief. Bereaved individuals with complicated grief diagnosis (n = 50) were randomly assigned to either the treatment group or a waiting list control condition. 58.8% of the participants lost their child, 11.8%, their partners, 11.8% their sibling. The 5-week intervention consisted of three modules: (1) self-confrontation with the circumstance of death of a significant person, (2) cognitive reappraisal and (3) sharing and farewell ritual. The participants in the experimental group (n = 25) improved significantly compared with the participants in the waiting control condition on trauma-related symptoms and general psychopathology. These results indicate that this new approach of treatment form for complicated grief is promising. Results and further implications of Internet-based interventions are discussed and current studies are presented.
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Ulf-Dietrich Reips
Basic research on privacy, self-disclosure and trust on the Internet
Authors
Ulf-Dietrich Reips (University of Zurich
)
Tom Buchanan (University of Westminster
)
Adam Joinson (Open University)
Issues of privacy and trust are critical in understanding people's willingness to disclose personal information to Internet-based services, including to Internet-based intervention systems. In this paper we present the results of a series of mostly experimental studies that examine the association between privacy, trust and people's disclosure to Internet-based services. These studies were conducted in the ESRC funded Privacy and Self-Disclosure Online project (PRISD, http://www.prisd.net/).
Our research suggests that privacy or trust are sufficient, but not necessary, for disclosure of sensitive information to Internet-based services. The results further suggest that increased privacy (as designed into the system) leads to higher perceived trustworthiness, while increased trust cues also lead to higher perceived privacy. Dispositional privacy concerns and situational factors (i.e trust in the requestor and perceived privacy) were found to form two independent pathways predicting willingness to disclose personal information.
The implications for the design of privacy-enhancing, trustworthy online intervention systems are discussed. We will also briefly present a number of Internet-based measurement scales of privacy, self-disclosure and trust on the Internet we developed over the course of our project.
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