Educational games for mental health professionals: a Cochrane review

Learning in general can be been a passive process. This review is aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of educational games as a teaching strategy in mental health professionals.

We searched for all relevant randomised control trials (RCT) that compared educational games as teaching strategies with other methods of learning using electronic and reference searching, and by contacting trial authors. Data were extracted from selected trials and, individual person data was analysed using fixed effect Peto Odds Ratio (OR) and the 95% confidence intervals (CI). If appropriate, the number needed to treat (NNT) or number needed to harm (NNH) was estimated. For continuous data, we calculated weighted mean differences.

We identified one trial (n = 34) of an educational game for mental health nursing students which followed up participants only over a few hours. For an outcome we arbitrarily defined ('no academically important improvement [a 10% improvement in scores]'), those allocated to educational games fared considerably better than students in the standard education techniques group (OR 0.06 CI 0.01 to 0.27, NNT 3 CI 2 to 4). On average those in the games group scored six more points than the control students on a test of questions relevant to psychosis set to the standard of the mental health nursing curriculum of the day (WMD 6 CI 2.63 to 9.37).

Current limited evidence suggests educational games could help mental health students gain more points in their tests; however this interesting study should be refined and repeated.