Effects of Gamified Rehabilitation on Cognitive and Psychosocial Outcomes in Inpatients With Schizophrenia

Summary

Schizophrenia is a severe and chronic mental disorder that profoundly impacts patients' psychological, social, and occupational functions. Cognitive impairment is a core symptom that severely limits daily living abilities. Systematic rehabilitation is crucial for delaying disease progression and improving social functions.

Traditional rehabilitation typically relies on pharmacological treatments and conventional cognitive remediation therapies. However, cognitive training alone rarely translates spontaneously into real-world functional improvement; integration with functional skills training is generally required before meaningful gains in daily living are achieved. Furthermore, traditional interventions are typically delivered in contexts detached from patients' everyday lives and are often perceived as monotonous, resulting in poor treatment adherence and compromised long-term rehabilitation outcomes.

With the development of digital health technologies, gamified interventions offer new opportunities for psychiatric rehabilitation. Among these innovative approaches, integrating psychoeducation with interactive storytelling has shown unique advantages. Such immersive narrative contexts can effectively enhance patients' illness awareness, treatment motivation, and medication adherence. Nevertheless, existing digital tools still have room for improvement. On one hand, many applications are confined to static screen-based interactions, overlooking the elevated somatic disease burden and sedentary risks prevalent in this population. On the other hand, existing applications rarely successfully integrate cognitive interventions with coherent psychosocial interventions, making it difficult for cognitive improvements to genuinely translate into real-life skills.

To this end, the present study developed an interactive digital rehabilitation application specifically designed for individuals with schizophrenia. This intervention innovatively combines cognitive remediation with psychosocial rehabilitation through two distinct yet highly complementary modules: a sensory-motion cognitive module, which leverages the built-in motion-sensing capabilities of mobile devices to engage patients in moderate physical activity while performing cognitive tasks; and an interactive narrative module, encompassing medication management, symptom management, psychological recovery, and social rehabilitation. Through a randomized controlled trial, this study evaluates the practical effectiveness of this multimodal approach in improving patients' overall rehabilitation outcomes, ultimately seeking to provide a highly engaging rehabilitation pathway that facilitates the transfer of skills to daily life.

Conditions

• Schizophrenia

Interventions

OTHER

Gamified Digital Rehabilitation

A digital application consisting of two complementary modules: 1. Somatosensory cognitive games utilizing the device's gyroscope to engage patients in moderate physical activity while completing cognitive tasks, consisting of 10 games set in a community background; 2. Interactive narrative games divided into four modules: medication management, symptom management, psychological rehabilitation, and social rehabilitation, comprising a total of 24 stories. Patients complete one cognitive game and two narrative games per session.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Shanghai Mental Health Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jun Cai · Shanghai Mental Health Center

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

45 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-04-19

Primary Completion

2028-07-31

Completion

2028-07-31

Countries

• China

Study Locations