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- Title
The Use of Videogames as Complementary Therapeutic Tool for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Bulimia Nervosa Patients.
- Authors
Fernandez-Aranda, Fernando; Jimenez-Murcia, Susana; Santamaría, Juan J.; Giner-Bartolomé, Cristina; Mestre-Bach, Gemma; Granero, Roser; Sánchez, Isabel; Agüera, Zaida; Moussa, Maher H.; Magnenat-Thalmann, Nadia; Konstantas, Dimitri; Lam, Tony; Lucas, Mikkel; Nielsen, Jeppe; Lems, Peter; Tarrega, Salomé; Menchón, José Manuel
- Abstract
Although cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been demonstrated to be the most effective approach for the treatment of bulimia nervosa (BN), there is lack of studies showing whether a combination with a serious video game (SVG) might be useful to enhance patients' emotional regulation capacities and general outcome. The aims of this study were (a) to analyze whether outpatient CBT + SVG, when compared with outpatient CBT − SVG, shows better short-term outcome; (b) to examine whether the CBT + SVG group is more effective in reducing emotional expression and levels of anxiety than CBT − SVG. Thirty-eight patients diagnosed as having BN according to DSM-5 criteria were consecutively assigned to two outpatient group therapy conditions (that lasted for 16 weekly sessions): 20 CBT + SVG versus 18 CBT − SVG. Patients were assessed before and after treatment using not only a food and binging/purging diary and clinical questionnaires in the field of eating disorders but also additional indexes for measuring anger expression and anxiety. Regarding the post-treatment psychometric measures, most of the mean differences (Eating Disorder Inventory-2, Symptom Checklist-Revised, State-Trait Anxiety Index, and partially State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory) achieved moderate to high effect size ( d > 0.5), in the sense that CBT + SVG obtained the best results compared with the CBT − SVG group. Regarding therapy outcome (dropout, partial remission, and total remission), CBT + SVG showed better results and a moderate effect size emerged for the comparison of the risk of dropout during the treatment, being higher for CBT − SVG compared with CBT + SVG (44.1 percent versus 20.0 percent, d = 0.54). Although the sample size in our study was low, and consequently results should be considered with caution, we have obtained promising findings suggesting that in the short-term CBT + SVG might be a good option not only for improving emotional dysregulation and approaching the current limitations of CBT − SVG in BN but also for enhancing the therapy adherence of patients.
- Subjects
VIDEO games; COGNITIVE therapy; BULIMIA; BULIMIA treatment; EATING disorders; DIALECTICAL behavior therapy; PATIENTS; THERAPEUTICS
- Publication
CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 2015, Vol 18, Issue 12, p744
- ISSN
2152-2715
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1089/cyber.2015.0265