From the mHealthNews archive
Can a game reduce shame? Research by Lynn Miller, a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, is hoping to answer that question.
Since the late 1980s, Miller has been working to understand the thinking of men who take sexual risks with other men (MSM). Recently, she has used her findings to develop mobile interventions that will lead to sexual risk reduction. She will discuss the results of her efforts as part of the session titled “Mobile Psycho-social Interventions” at the HIMSS Media mHealth Summit, scheduled for January 8-11 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center just outside Washington D.C.
Much of Miller’s early work revolved around recognizing and untangling the array of emotions that come to play in impromptu sexual encounters between men.
“Once you understand the emotional context, you can develop ways of changing ‘self-regulation’ patterns,” she said. Those years, the late 1980s and early 1990s, also saw the rapid introduction of interactive devices – i.e., video games – that could be used to develop narrative interventions in programs designed to guide at-risk populations to better and safer decisions.
“We realized it was possible to use these technologies to try to simulate experiences,” she said, the goal being to make young men more cognizant of, and better able to control, the maze of emotions at play in potentially sexual situations.
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“Acknowledging emotions and teasing them out has turned out to be very important,” she said, as the growing body of research results has enabled her to develop an array of intervention components.
As with much else related to mHealth, new technology has enabled new approaches, and in her presentation Miller will discuss her most recent NIH-funded study, which used 3D-animated, downloadable narrations that targeted MSM in the 18-24 age range.
Related projects have involved distributing DVDs at kiosks in health clinics, and similar products have also been used in conjunction with HIV counseling sessions.
From a researcher’s perspective, Miller said, the beauty of gaming technology is that it enables both study projects and intervention programs to be downloaded any time, any place. What’s more, downloadable games and other narrative scenarios enable similar studies to be tested quickly on a national basis.
Indeed, for her most recent work, Miller was able to recruit from thousands of applicants online, while also pulling together a very large survey sample from across the country.
As for the actual study outcomes, Miller said her research demonstrated that gaming scenarios were able to reduce the feelings of shame often associated with risky sexual behavior, and that reducing shame via narrative intervention – in other words, helping young men identify and control their often conflicting emotions – resulted in a reduction of subsequent risky behavior.
More information on the HIMSS Media mHealth Summit can be found at http://www.mhealthsummit.org/program-details/overview.
