Description and evaluation of a serious game intervention to engage low secure service users with serious mental illness in the design and refurbishment of their environment.

Service user involvement in all levels of healthcare provision is the expectation of UK government policy. Involvement should not only include participation in the planning and delivery of health care but also the exercise of choice and opinions about that care. In practice, however, service user engagement is most often tokenistic, involving post hoc consultation over plans already committed to by services. This paper explores an Occupational Therapy-led initiative to use the Serious Game format to engage low secure service users with serious mental illness in the design, layout and refurbishment of their unit. Among other things how medication was to be dispensed on the new unit was explored by this game and led to significant replanning in response to service user involvement. The game format was found to be a useful tool in facilitating communication between professionals and a traditionally marginalized and powerless client group. It enabled service users to have a voice, it provided a format for that voice to be heard and made possible service-led change in the planning process.