A Mobile Psychotherapy Game for Elderly With Memory Disorder Issues

Abstract

Realizing the current pharmacological approach in treating memory disorder patients has its side effects, concerns on how to treat elderly suffering with memory disorder diseases like Dementia and Alzheimer have been a growing issue of discussions over a decade. Discussions are focusing on understanding the most efficient way of treating them. Throughout the past years, various researchers and scientists have come up with various ways to help in stimulating the brain and one of them is using games. Altough various games have been created for elderly, most of the games were not developed specifically for memory disorder patients. Most of the games are not created to suit these audience because there are no known guidelines to help in creating a proper game. This article aims to discover criteria that can help in the development of games to be used in psychotherapy for memory disorder patients. Combination of extensive literature review and interview were conducted in identifying suitable features and criteria needed in a game for psychotherapy treatment. There are total of 20 guidelines have been discovered and are categorized into four main sections; gameplay, device, interface and game features. Based on the criteria obtained, a mobile psychotherapy game is designed and developed in Android environment and called as [Neuro]-therapy game. The game has been successfully evaluated through both verification and validation involving 55 respondents among elderly. Findings show that the proposed [Neuro]-therapy game is useful and easy to be used for psychotherapy purposes. This design guideline and the game itself are believed to benefit many parties; the scholars, practitioners, caretakers, and patients. It is hope that it will give directions to developers on developing more games for memory disorder patients towards improving the quality of life among the elderly with memory disorder issues.