Recovery orientated care emphasizes equality in relations. Forensic psychiatric professionals need to engage in care-relationships with patients in ways where power is symmetrically distributed among them. However, professionals also need to focus on security at the ward. This promotes patient-professional power-relations that are asymmetrically skewed towards professionals. New practical ways of balancing between the power-relations defined by a care and custody dichotomy in forensic care need to be developed and studied to guide clinical practice.

To study how power-relations are articulated between patient-professional within a social gaming activity (E – sport) in a Danish medium secure forensic psychiatric ward.

Three months of observational data, collected via anthropological fieldwork Interviews with 3 professionals and 6 patients Data was analyzed using sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of field, capital and power

The E-sport intervention consists of two fields “in-game” and “over-game” In-game concerns the practice of gaming Over-game concerns the interventions organization Power in each field is driven by specific values and access to certain competencies Power in-game was equally open to patients and professionals leading to symmetric power relations Power over-game was open to professionals only leading to asymmetrical power relations Professionals may allow power distribution to patients during gameplay, while still retaining the overall power over the intervention

It is possible to balance between care-and-custody in forensic psychiatry. This study provides important insights to guide further practice.

Recently video gaming, have attracted considerable attention for its possible beneficial therapeutic effects, the possibility for testing behavior in safe artificial environments and as a tool for professionals and patients to build specific competencies for the everyday life. Also, a substantial amount of research suggests that videogaming might improve the participants social and cognitive skills and emotional regulation. There is little or no evidence that videogaming increases long term aggression or leads to physical aggression. At a medium secure forensic psychiatric in-patient ward, the patients and staff engage in weekly E – Sport sessions (primarily counterstrike) to further the recovery process.

To provide a standardized description of how E-sport is organized and used in the recovery process among forensic psychiatric patients.

The Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) checklist and guide is widely used to in health research to describe interventions in clinical trials and other health research contexts. By use of TIDieR we describe a newly developed E-sport intervention, in which staff members and patients in a medium secure forensic psychiatric ward engage in weekly E-Sport sessions (primarily counterstrike) to improve patient–staff relationship.

The E-sport intervention is detailed by use of the 12 TIDieR items and practical experiences and insights will be described.

This standardized and detailed description of how is used in a recovery-oriented process in forensic psychiatry can be used for future studies that wishes to implement the intervention or for research studies replicating the treatment.

No significant relationships.