Interactive Game-based System for Psychological Health Education

When a service member returns from deployment, expectations on both sides run high for a joyous reunion. However, this transition to a peacetime environment can pose many challenges for the service member as well as his family and friends. Soar Technology and our partners at USC’s Institute for Creative Technology and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System propose to develop a game-based training environment that will help the friends, family and peers of service members recognize when a service member may need psychological help and to encourage that service member to voluntarily seek out help. Our game-based training environment will focus on thee areas; recognizing the signs that a service member may need help, using Brief Motivational Interviewing (BMI) to encourage the service member to seek out help, and understanding the psychological health resources available to different categories of service members. Our team is uniquely suited to develop this game-based training system for psychological health education: we have extensive experience in building game-based training tools for the military, using game environments as psychological therapy tools, and providing psychological health treatment specifically to the military community.