G-motiv Mental
In the G-motiv Mental project, Science (TU Delft), creative industry (IJsfontein) and mental health care (Brijder Verslavingszorg) have joined forces to enable youngsters beat cannabis addiction. We are part of the larger G-motiv project, which is led by Valentijn Visch and also adresses physical activity of elderly and social behavior in the workplace.
One hour is just too short When youngsters loose grip on cannabis use, smoking can interfere with their development. Yearly, Brijder treats about 300 youngsters for cannabis addiction. Treatment consists of cognitive behavioral therapy, including one face-to-face contact a week and additional homework assignments, including self registration of triggers for cannabis use. One hour face-to-face contact is often too little to sustain motivation for therapy: diary reports are infrequent and youngsters do not show up for one third of therapy sessions. Hence, the G-motiv mental team will develop a tool aims to sustain motivation for therapy between face-to-face contacts.
Play We will use addictions’ antidote: play. Play means freedom to break with the laws that dominate reality. Therefore we can use it to shine light on mental places and times that the youngsters otherwise would not have faced in the therapeutic context. To ensure that gameplay shines light on real issues, gameplay will be intertwined with reality on different levels. Strategy in the game battle will be a metaphor for the transition from an addicted to sober identity. Diary adherence will be rewarded with faster turn-taking, enabling the player to strike in time. Finaly, game play will be designed such that performance depends on cognitive skills affected by cannabis use. This way, we aim to facilitate adherence to diary reports and demonstate how cannabis blocks progress.
Health care + creative industry + science = useful, stimulating and generic Brijder Addiction Care will ensure that we are solving real problems of real youngsters and will provide information on the problem that we are trying to solve. Science will link the problem to known psychological principles sucht that the conditions that the game needs to meet can be determined. IJsfontein Interactive Media will translate these conditions into interesting game play. Finally, the TU Delft will validate whether the tool enabled grip on cannabis use and deliver generic knowledge for future projects.