Research: Creating & Testing Digital Treatments
As a clinical psychologist, my work focuses on adapting and testing evidence based care for conflict, intimacy, and beliefs from traditional mental health treatment to digital media, including skills-learning games, online treatment platforms, and virtual clinics for adults. As a specialist in research protocols, I am particularly driven to create rigorous research protocols, with standardized testing measures and analytic structures (both qualitative and quantitative), to test the performance and mechanisms that drive how digital media (e.g., games, platforms) teach mental health skills to adults.
I have also provided vocals for therapist characters and therapist content in digital therapeutics.
As a researcher, my work focuses on:
Creating online & digital tools: teaching emotion regulation, coping, communication, & intimacy skills to adults
Testing the impact of games on health: from theory into evidence-based research protocol, psychometric testing, & sharing results
Integration of game design x clinical science skills: converting in-game behavior to research databases for testing (e.g., JSON to SPSS)
Identifying and securing funding: in research into games & personalized healthcare technology
Below are some samples of games that I have contributed to and/or completed.
DAting flags: in development
Dating flags is a dating-sim, visual novel style romance-thriller game with embedded psychoeducational components. This game was designed to teach core skills for relationships within a fun, replayable, over-the-counter game.
In 2024, two trials of the psychoeducational section on emotion regulation found that individuals who played the game had increased emotional awareness, compared to individuals who read traditional psychoeducational handouts.
This game was recently awarded MAGIC spell seed funding at RIT
BRAINFIRE: OXYCODONE RESCUE (‘22)
BrainFire: Oxycodone Fire is a VR educational game with an exercise game mechanic that teaches bystander intervention skill for oxycodone overdose.
The game replicates a traditional environment where someone may witness an overdose (i.e., a party) and then guides the user in how to respond to an OD from witnessing to coordinating with emergency services.
This game was funded by Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) through the Rural Communities Opioid Response Program (RCORP).
DIEM: Digital Icon Emotion Measure (Testing ‘22-24)
DIEM is a 6-item emotion scale designed as a rapid measure of emotional states within digital media. It is complete visual, with no verbal cues, and was designed using cross-cultural, universal cues for emotion and direction (i.e., color and design). DIEM was used across two free-clinic sites from 2022-2024, alongside traditional measures of functioning and distress (e.g., PHQ-9, GAD-7, etc.). Data collection is presently complete, and results are now being prepared for publication.
rITCHcbt (‘21-present, in development)
RITchCBT is a 12-session online treatment platform created & designed by Dr. Caroline Easton (RIT, University of Rochester). It walks the user through 12 sessions of SADV treatment for co-occurring substance use and violence.
Note. RITchCBT images are IP of Dr. Caroline Easton; contact Dr. Easton for sample images or with questions about this project.
My roles in this project include:
Transforming project from prototype to working website & application, working as a liaison with engineering team
Creating and implementing research protocols & psychometric tools, including running over 100 participants
Creating therapeutic content from script to completed module for 12-session Spanish modules and new motivation-goals (motivational enhancement therapy) sessions, increasing device reach by 300,000 patients
Developing ‘device insert’ treatment manual for grant-funding and site dissemination
RITchCBT is funded through several sources, including:
UG3/UH3 from the National Institute of Health, for FDA testing of digital therapeutics, awarded to Caroline Easton
RIT Personalized Healthcare Technology Seed Funding, Awarded to Cassie Berbary and Emi Moriuchi