PROJECT

Dedicated to ascertaining by means of the use of various scientific methods the therapeutic aspects of role playing gaming. Considerations include cognitive, biological, behavioral, biological, humanistic, existential, sociological, and psychodynamic approaches to psychology. Implementations will draw on the data and information developed to implement various therapy methods using therapeutic recreation techniques in conjunction with role playing gaming either as a sole therapy modality, or more likely, to work in conjunction with other treatment modalities.

MISSION

A large scale, multi-phased, long term, multi-variable, triple-blind research study series on the therapeutic aspects of role playing gaming.

PURPOSE

To determine the causal characteristics of role playing games, rather than relying on correlative data as other studies have done in the past, and define the specific therapeutic characteristics of role playing gaming to develop the most effective therapy modality.

This website has been created for the RPG Research Project. This project was started based on an essay written by W.A. Hawke Robinson for the Therapeutic Recreation Department at Eastern Washington University in 2004, and has since begun to develop into a more detailed hypothesis, thesis and research project.

There are scores of existing research projects, but most are either just using correlative data, or very small in scale or short in term.

The goal of the study is to determine if there are any therapeutic impacts on those who role play and determine if there are any positive or negative statistically significant characteristics can can clearly be defined in a causal rather than correlative relationship, with the hypothesis that en effective therapy modality using role playing gaming could be developed for treatment of various clients' needs.

APPROACH

"Holistic medicine treats the person rather than the disease,
it's concern lies with the 'whole person' and with permitting
individuals to assume self-responsibility for their own health.
Whereas illness is the sole concern of 'traditional medicine',
holistic 'well medicine' deals with wellness and health promotion"