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How Do I Feel When… A Card-Based Communication Game to Stimulate Empathy Among Family Members with Anorexia Nervosa

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Advances in Design and Digital Communication (Digicom 2020)

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Design and Innovation ((SSDI,volume 12))

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Abstract

Today, games play active roles in diverse stages of the treatment of various mental illnesses. Despite this favourable context, their use as tools in the treatment of anorexia nervosa is still quite unexplored. We are developing playful and gamified tools that can be used as instruments in the prevention, treatment and monitoring of this complex disease. The objective of this paper is to present the initial process of design and development of a card-based game called How do I feel when… Its purpose consists of stimulating empathy among family members of patients with anorexia nervosa. Play sessions are to be mediated by health professionals and are supposed to occur in the context of support and therapeutic groups for family members of people suffering from eating disorders or in clinical consultations. Preliminary tests and expert reviews showed that the game is effective in establishing free association of subjects in players’ reasonings, and in inciting the externalisation and sharing of players’ feelings. It also demonstrated that, because players usually read the cards in accordance to their life experience, the game is able to circumscribe and personalise the subjects to be discussed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For more information about family behaviours and reactions that may occur when a family member has an eating disorder consult Treasure et al. [48].

  2. 2.

    Authors’ translation: “pôr em comum, partilhar, trocar opiniões, conferenciar” [30].

  3. 3.

    The World of Empa is a cooperation project between Bartiméus (www.bartimeus.nl), Vrije University Amsterdam, Clinical Child and Family Studies (www.psy.vu.nl) and Metropolisfilm (www.metropolisfilm.nl). URL: www.theworldofempa.org. Date of access: 2020/06/30.

  4. 4.

    Knowing you, Knowing me has funding support from Queensland Health, DRUG-ARM Australasia, auDA Foundation, Drink Safe Coalition, Sunshine Coast Youth Partnership and Project support from the following organizations: Various Artists and Virtual Obsession.

  5. 5.

    For affective communication to take place, we believe it would be important for players to justify the reason for their choice at the end of each round. That way, players could have more opportunities to communicate empathetically and to express their feelings.

  6. 6.

    To trigger affective empathy the game would need other components (e.g. additional material with information) to help players elicit deeper emotional responses in each other. Although the cards offer a context, no guidance is given as to the creation of stories that may have the intended potential.

  7. 7.

    “A ludofictional world can be defined as a system of connected possible worlds that generates a game space determined by fictional content and closely related rules.” [49].

  8. 8.

    Due to the established COVID-19 precautionary measures, this task is for now set for future work.

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Acknowledgements

This work is funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the contract SFRH/BD/145986/2019.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto/ID+/CINTESIS, Porto, Portugal

    Viviane Peçaibes

  2. Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto/INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal

    Pedro Cardoso

  3. ICBAS/CINTESIS, Porto, Portugal

    Liliana Castro

  4. INESC TEC/Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Bruno Giesteira

  5. Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Livia Lopes

  6. Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Clara Junqueira

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  1. Viviane Peçaibes
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Correspondence to Viviane Peçaibes .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. ID+/School of Design, Polytechnic Institute of Cavado and Ave, Barcelos, Portugal

    Nuno Martins

  2. CECS/Institute of Social Sciences, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Daniel Brandão

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Peçaibes, V., Cardoso, P., Castro, L., Giesteira, B., Lopes, L., Junqueira, C. (2021). How Do I Feel When… A Card-Based Communication Game to Stimulate Empathy Among Family Members with Anorexia Nervosa. In: Martins, N., Brandão, D. (eds) Advances in Design and Digital Communication . Digicom 2020. Springer Series in Design and Innovation , vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61671-7_40

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