TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bowers, Clint
AU  - Barclay, Paul
PY  - 2018
DA  - 2018/10/07
TI  - Feasibility of a Meditation Video Game to Reduce Anxiety in College Students
JO  - OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine
SP  - 024
VL  - 03
IS  - 04
AB  - (1) Background: Meditation is a common intervention for college students suffering from issues with anxiety. Due to this popularity, several meditation-based video games have been released which can be used to supplement or motivate meditation practice. However, these tools are not often given scrutiny in a laboratory setting before being released to the public. Our lab conducted a brief feasibility pilot study to investigate Meditation Deathmatch, an open-source meditation video game aimed at stimulating meditation practice. Acceptability, usability, and efficacy were assessed to determine whether Meditation Deathmatch might provide an appropriate and effective means of introducing students to meditation.
(2) Methods:  42 undergraduate students played this game as part of a brief meditation session and completed both pre- and post-training measures of state anxiety as well as the System Usability Scale (SUS) and a short questionnaire assessing attitudes toward meditation.
(3) Results: Participants who received training using Meditation Deathmatch showed significant post-training decreases in state anxiety  and consistent and significant increases in game score across trials. These participants reported high levels of Usability and were more likely to report an intention to integrate meditation into their daily lives.
(4) Conclusions: Game-based meditation training may be an effective tool for encouraging meditation practice.  Further research may work to compare the effectiveness of game-based training to traditional methods and implement game-based meditation training in the treatment of patients with anxiety disorders.
SN  - 2573-4393
UR  - https://doi.org/10.21926/obm.icm.1804024
DO  - 10.21926/obm.icm.1804024
ID  - Bowers2018
ER  -