Chess Training as add-on Intervention for Adolescents With Psychiatric and Psychosomatic Disorders

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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In the planned study, the effect of chess training on the cognitive abilities of children and adolescents with psychiatric and psychosomatic illnesses will be investigated in a naturalistic setting. Furthermore, the effects on therapy success and quality of life will be determined.Despite the thoroughly positive results, CRT has not yet been included in the official guidelines as an intervention in standard therapy; this is due, among other things, to too few studies and too little knowledge in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry. The planned study aims to fill the research gap in the field of chess training as an adjunctive intervention in children and adolescents and to provide further evidence on the relevance of CRT in child and adolescent psychiatry. The hypotheses of the proposed study are: chess training as a six-week add-on intervention will improve cognitive functioning in adolescents with psychiatric/psychosomatic disorders compared to standard treatment. chess training as a six-week add-on intervention improves quality of life in adolescents with psychiatric/psychosomatic disorders compared to standard treatment. chess training as a six-week add-on intervention positively influences the course of therapy in adolescents with psychiatric/psychosomatic illnesses compared to standard treatment.

Official Title
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Chess Training as add-on Intervention for Adolescents With Psychiatric and Psychosomatic Disorders

Conditions
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Children and Adolescents Inpatient in Psychiatric Hospital

Intervention / Treatment
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* Behavioral: Chess training


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: Inpatient treatment at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of Childhood and Adolescence, ZI Mannheim Age between 13 and 17 years Sufficient ability to answer questions verbally and in written form Ability to give consent by patients and their parents after detailed verbal and written explanation Consent of patients and parents must be given in paper form Exclusion Criteria: Date of inpatient admission more than 3 weeks ago Withdrawal of informed consent Severe psychiatric, neurological and internal medical comorbidities

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 13 Years
Maximum Age: 17 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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No

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Treatment
Allocation: Non-Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Interventional Model Description: After inclusion in the study, participation in chess training begins after screening. Patients who have volunteered for chess training are then matched with patients for the comparison group. Care is taken to ensure that this group is similar to the chess group in terms of diagnoses and age (pairwise matching).
Masking: None (Open Label)


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: Chess training group<br>group receiving additional chess training | Behavioral: Chess training<br>* The chess training, which takes place as a measure for CRT with the children and adolescents, is carried out by the concept of the Munich Chess Academy. The concept applied here, Chess according to the King's Plan, represents a holistic concept. Especially prepared for children and adolescents, theoretical aspects are illustrated in games and exercises.<br>|
| No Intervention: control group<br>group receiving standard therapy only | |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Change in comorbidities | Youth Self Report (YSR, Achenbach 1991b) | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 
| Change in depressive symptoms | Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II, Beck, Steer, Brown 1996) | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 
| Change in anxiety symptoms | Beck Anyxiety Inventory (BAI, deutsche Version Margraf, Ehlers 2007) | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 
| Change in Quality of life | The KIDSCREEN Group Europe. (2006). | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 
| Change of the overall functional level | Global assessment of functioning (Diagnostic screening measure according to DSM-IV) | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 
| Change in mental flexibility | Dimensional Card Sorting Task (Zelazo et al., 2014 | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 
| Change in attentional capacity | d2 Test of Attention (Brickenkamp 2002) | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 
| Change in Reaction inhibition | Go-No-Go Task (Sebastian et al., 2013) | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 
| Change in Fluid intelligence | Stop Signal Task (Sebastian et al., 2013) | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 
| Change in reaction time | Simple Reaction Time Task (Woods, Wyma, Yund, Herron, & Reed, 2015) | 2 time points: before and after 6 weeks chess training | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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cognitive remediation, Chess training, working memory, decision making, executiv control, chess, cognitive change, Quality of life in adolescents