Digital psychoeducational rehabilitation supported by serious games for psychiatric inpatients: a protocol study

Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) are characterized by impairments in thought, perception, emotion, and behavior, leading to reduced personal and social functioning. While pharmacological treatments have limited efficacy on negative and cognitive symptoms, psychosocial interventions play a crucial role but remain difficult for many patients to access, particularly among youths. Digital interventions, particularly serious games, offer a promising approach to enhance recovery by improving accessibility, engagement, and motivation. The present protocol study aims to develop and preliminary evaluate serious games as a complementary tool to standard psychoeducational interventions for young SSD patients. The primary objective is to evaluate the feasibility of some serious games in a real-world clinical setting. Secondary objectives are to explore whether the addition of those serious games to a standard psychoeducational intervention leads to a greater improvement in global functioning, emotion dysregulation, severity of general psychopathology and other clinical or functional outcomes.

A quasi-experimental, non-randomized study with a historical control group will be conducted at the Unit of Clinical Psychiatry, Polytechnic University of Marche (Italy), involving patients aged 15-24 years diagnosed with SSD and related disorders, including at-risk mental states. Participants will be inpatients who had received a standard conventional psychoeducational program (control group) and inpatients who will receive the same program supplemented with serious games (experimental group). These games delivered both via web-based platform and smartphone application, simulate real-life scenarios and reinforce learning through interactive and repetitive exercises.

We expect the integration of serious games to be feasible and well accepted, enhancing engagement, adherence, mental health literacy, and the consolidation and transfer of skills acquired through standard psychoeducation, with potential improvements in global functioning and psychopathological symptoms.

This approach may represent a scalable and innovative strategy to improve the recovery and long-term outcomes in youth with SSD and related disorders admitted to an acute psychiatric setting.