Professor develops new way to 'just say no'

Joel Epstein hopes his system will be more effective than D.A.R.E.

By Chase Koeneke

Published April 20, 2009

Since 1983, youth across the U.S. have been told to "just say no" by substance-abuse awareness programs, such as D.A.R.E., but some youth are still saying "yes" to drugs and alcohol.

MU psychiatry assistant professor Joel Epstein said he believes drug programs need a little interactivity. And even though he's never owned his own gaming console, Epstein has just received a $1 million grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse to make a video game aimed at educating youth on the science of drug addiction on the human body.

When Epstein went to graduate school at the University of South Carolina for clinical and community psychology, he found a new use for skills in programming. He now works at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health.

"Using a compiled BASIC language, I developed some scoring and interpretation programs," Epstein said.

These programs allowed him to breeze through his assignments. When called into his professor's office, Epstein feared that the jig was up, but found his professor was so impressed by what'd done he asked for Epstein's assistance on some research.

"From that point on, I have been fascinated with the possibilities of the interface between psychology and computers," Epstein said.

So why will a video game be more effective than other programs, such as D.A.R.E?

"Whenever students are immersed in their learning materials, they are more likely to retain the knowledge they've been taught," Epstein said.

Epstein is pulling double duty by gathering data for his research all while trying to educate students.

"I also am interested in looking at gender differences in response to the program, so I will build two versions of the game," he said.

But he's planning more than just a pink and blue palette swap. His idea is to make one based around competition and one that's more socially collaborative.

"My hypothesis is that girls will prefer the latter and boys will prefer the former," he said. "I am interested to see if these differential preferences lead to changes in learning."

Like many students at MU, Epstein has his own four-year plan. For the first two years, Epstein and his small team will build the game and then will test it in St. Louis area schools, then make tweaks for the following two years. He said he hopes to get feedback from teachers to integrate his game into their curricula as well as get a student perspective.

"Although I had originally conceived the program to follow a mystery type format, it really is much too early to know what it will finally turn out like," he said.

We probably won't be seeing it on any major consoles.

"Because I want to ensure that a wide audience of students can use my program, I am hesitant to develop the program for a specific gaming system," Epstein said. "Schools typically don't have access to this type of equipment."

Now that almost all elementary schools have Internet access, Epstein said developing the game for that avenue is the best solution.

Gamers have been more than a little critical of the project, voicing their opinions on forums and blogs, but it hasn't seemed to faze Epstein. He issued a challenge to them.

"If they think that they have the ability, let them come work with me to create something for which they would have some respect," he said.

Epstein said he is confident in his team's ability to make an educational product and said he's willing to listen or collaborate with anyone, fan or skeptic.