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Action-Centered Exposure Therapy Using a Serious Game to Help Individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder

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Serious Games (JCSG 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12945))

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Abstract

Alcohol use disorder is a worldwide issue causing distress and harm all over societies. The rate of relapse and dropout alcohol addiction treatment shows the necessity to improve those treatments. It is often caused by a lack of motivation or boredom. Cue exposure therapy is an effective treatment that tries to prevent relapses, but it has too many flaws preventing a global inhibition of the addiction. Virtual reality exposure therapy improves cue exposure therapy by using a virtual environment, that way the treatment is less situation-dependent by controlling a virtual world and its context. Serious games are used to address problems that we can find in more classical ways of learning such as motivation and boredom. It also allows the patient to have more active participation. This new approach aims to combine virtual reality exposure therapy, and action-centered exposure therapy, with a serious game to avoid dropout and have better self-commitment from patients. This paper provides key elements to propose a new approach to help tackle AUD. A prototype, to give an example of the implementation, a serious game is also presented.

Funding: This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); grant number RGPIN-2019-07169.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/understanding-alcohol-use-disorder.

  2. 2.

    https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm.

  3. 3.

    https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics.

  4. 4.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/bulletins/retailsales/march2020.

  5. 5.

    https://medlineplus.gov/alcoholusedisorderaudtreatment.html.

  6. 6.

    https://www.oculus.com/quest-2/.

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Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Nathan Sioui and Marly Beaudoin for the 3D Assets of the environment and Pierre Tousignant and Guillaume Côté for the supervision of these 3D artists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi, Canada

    Flavien Ehret, Yannick Francillette & Bob-Antoine J. Menelas

  2. Centre de Thérapie La Futaie, Chicoutimi, Canada

    Benoit Girard

Authors
  1. Flavien Ehret
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  2. Yannick Francillette
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  3. Benoit Girard
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  4. Bob-Antoine J. Menelas
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Flavien Ehret .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK

    Bobbie Fletcher

  2. Falmouth University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK

    Minhua Ma

  3. Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

  4. BIBA, IKAP, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge

  5. Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Tim Marsh

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Ehret, F., Francillette, Y., Girard, B., Menelas, BA.J. (2021). Action-Centered Exposure Therapy Using a Serious Game to Help Individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder. In: Fletcher, B., Ma, M., Göbel, S., Baalsrud Hauge, J., Marsh, T. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12945. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88272-3_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88272-3_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-88271-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-88272-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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