Person-Centered Serious Games for Mental Health Education and Interprofessional Care

Description

This mixed method research project addresses two problems: 1) the need to understand more deeply the lived experiences of individuals living with mental illness in order to inform the design of a series of two mental health serious virtual simulation games (VSGs), geared for intersectoral students, nursing and social work, in post-secondary education and; 2) the need for more accessible and interactive mental health serious VSGs for intersectoral student learning prior to attending community placements. We will begin with an Ontario-wide collection of individual’s narratives about living with mental illness using qualitative methods and quantitative surveys and then apply the findings in two ways. First, we will incorporate the person-centered feedback into the serious VSGs’ storyline and secondly, develop, refine and implement two virtual simulation games depicting individuals living with mental illness and experiencing a crisis, i.e., suicidal thoughts into intersectoral curriculum.