Journal of Psychiatry

Preliminary evaluation of a new dyadic Program for Gaming Disorder Prevention

Annual World Congress on Psychiatry

July 11, 2022 | Webinar

Cecilia Cheng

The University of Hong Kong

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Psychiatry

Abstract:

Gaming disorder is a prevalent problem in the present digital age, and a multi-national systematic review of the literature revealed that Hong Kong has one of the highest prevalence rates. Scholars have made effort to conduct empirical studies to understand about the disorders’ aetiology and underlying psychosocial mechanisms, as well as to implement intervention programs as an attempt to tackle this timely disorder. As prevention is important to live a healthy lifestyle among youngsters, our team has developed a new dyadic program for preventing gaming disorder. Participants were forty parent-student dyads recruited from a Hong Kong primary school. Half of the participants was assigned to the target group (participation in prevention program) while the other half was assigned to the control group (waiting list). The parent participants were asked to rate their children’s symptoms of gaming disorder and gaming duration, as well as their family environment (i.e., family cohesion and family conflict) before and after the prevention program. The present results provided some tentative support for the effectiveness of the newly developed prevention program by revealing improvement in symptoms of gaming disorder, gaming duration, and family functioning. These findings indicate program effectiveness of our newly prevention program in promoting a positive family environment and reducing gaming disorder.

Biography :

Cecilia Cheng is a professor of psychology at the University of Hong Kong. She specializes in personality, social, health, applied, cross-cultural, and cyberpsychology. She is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and has served as the board secretary of the International Council of Psychologists (ICP). She received the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, Cambridge Hughes Hall Fellowship, ICP Early Career Research Award, and Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship of the Research Grants Council (RGC).Professor Cheng was an Associate Editor of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Personality Processes and Individual Differences section), a flagship journal in the social psychology field; and is currently an Associate Editor of Health Psychology Review, a flagship journal in the clinical psychology field. She is also a Consulting Editor of Psychological Bulletin, and a Review Editor of Frontiers in Psychology (Psychopathology). At the University of Hong Kong, she was the Associate Dean (Postgraduate Education) at the Faculty of Social Sciences and now the Associate Dean (Personal Development) at the Graduate School.