Shoot’Em Up
Children with chronic disease often fail to adhere to prescribed treatment regimens, especially self-administered treatments. This is a significant challenge to overcome. Several cognitive and motivational processes are thought to influence adherence, including: (i) knowledge about the therapy and its relationship to health; (ii) perceptions of one’s ability to influence health outcomes (perceived control); and (iii) confidence in one’s ability to meet the demands of treatment and recovery (self-efficacy). This is true of both children and adults, although the specific barriers to adherence most likely differ depending on age. Children-specific interventions to improve adherence, in my experience, fail to engage. And engagement is a necessary component of effectiveness.
Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across Re-Mission, a computer game designed to improve adherence to self-administered chemotherapy in children with cancer. In the game, players control a tiny robot, called ‘Roxxi’ (strangely attractive, see picture) within the body of a young cancer patient – the objective is to ensure that the virtual patients engage in self-care behaviours, such as taking oral chemotherapy to combat the cancer cells, taking antibiotics to fight infection, using relaxation techniques to reduce stress, and eating food to gain energy. The game is very playable, and there’s something intrinsically therapeutic about blasting the crap out of a malignant cancer cell, even for me
I know what the cynical among you are thinking, because I thought it to. Gimmick. And that’s why I was especially pleased to learn that Re-Mission had been evaluated in a peer-reviewed journal, and that the evaluation is positive. The conclusion? “The video-game intervention significantly improved treatment adherence and indicators of cancer-related self-efficacy and knowledge in adolescents and young adults who were undergoing cancer therapy. The findings support current efforts to develop effective video-game interventions for education and training in health care.“
