Effects of Smartphone Games on Levels of Anxiety, Depression, and Fatigue in Patients with Thalassemia

Thalassemia is a chronic hereditary anemia that affects patients throughout life due to therapeutic measures such as blood transfusion. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of smartphone games on anxiety, depression, and fatigue in thalassemia patients.

In a quasi-experimental study, 36 thalassemia patients were selected by simple random sampling based on inclusion criteria in Zabol, Iran 2019. They were divided into intervention and control groups. The intervention group were exposed to game therapy using smartphones, during blood transfusion sessions for 21 to 28 days. Levels of anxiety, depression, and fatigue were measured after one month. Data analysis was done in SPSS V22.

In intervention group, the mean scores for anxiety (47.88 ± 5.89), depression (46.77 ± 4.73), and fatigue (61.33 ± 6.73) significantly changed after the intervention (37.66± 6.12, 37.61±6.13, and 47.33±9.34, respectively) (P≤ 0.001), while, these values in control group did not show significant changes after the study (47.38 ± 9.41 vs. 47.00 ± 8.16, 46.83 ± 8.55 vs. 44.88 ± 5.55, and 59.61 ± 14.28 vs. 57.05 ± 9.81, respectively).

This study confirmed the positive effects of digital games on anxiety, depression, and fatigue in thalassemia patients and suggests this method as a non-pharmacological approach to reduce their problems.