Martin Fitzgerald

Biography

I was born and raised in the province of Otago, New Zealand. I am a New Zealand and Irish citizen and have worked for the University of Bradford since 2015, first as a clinical academic and now, full-time, as a Professional Lead for occupational therapy. However, academia is not my first or even second career. On leaving school, I studied Anthropology and Philosophy at the University of Otago, upon graduation I worked in radio as a music promoter. It was whilst working as a volunteer in a homeless night shelter in London that I became interested in mental health and my second career, occupational therapy. Since graduation from the Auckland Institute of Technology, I have mostly worked in learning disabilities and mental health. In 2009 I completed my MSc in Medical Sciences at Sheffield University, and as a result of this study, I became interested in my third career, academia and research. In 2018 I was fortunate to be awarded a £15,000 grant from the Constance Owens Trust PhD Award to support my PhD studies and I was awarded my Doctorate in 2024. I became interested in occupational therapy because of the passion and commitment to making a meaningful difference in people’s lives that I saw every day in practice when I worked as a volunteer. at a homeless night shelter. Occupational therapy is a diverse profession, and now is an exciting time to join us as we broaden away from the traditional restraints of the medical model and embrace our roots and future as occupation-based therapists. 

Research

The Use of Serious Games to Promote Treatment Engagement and Recovery from Psychosis

My clinical background is in forensic mental health, working with people who experience psychosis (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder) and detained under the Mental Health Act in long-term residential rehabilitation services. This client group is known to be hard to engage. The reasons are many but can be summarised as a poor fit between the treatment offered and service user needs. However, we do know that service users who engage in treatment tend to do better than those who do not, and as such, there is a need for clinicians to develop new interventions that meet service user needs and thereby promote treatment engagement.

Everybody knows how to play games, and the playful nature of games naturally facilitates peer-to-peer and peer-to-therapist communication, idea exchange and problem-solving. This is what makes serious games such a natural fit with occupational therapy because we use the activity of games to explore service users' problems and challenges to recovery.

Over the last ten years, I have been using games, in particular the structure of games (gamification), to support the non-gaming activity of treatment. In 2020, I started a research project funded by the occupational therapy charity The Constance Owns Trust to co-design and co-develop with service users who experience psychosis and staff who work with them a serious game intervention that promotes recovery. Over a series of focus groups and design workshops, we developed a working game concept called ‘Capturing the Sun’, a cognitive restructuring game where service users practice cognitive restructuring techniques with staff to explore real-life challenges. 

Because the game was co-designed and co-developed with service users and staff, we hope the intervention will meet the needs of staff – as a clinical intervention and the needs of service users – as something they think might help their recovery. We are now at the proof of concept stage and hope to run a pragmatic trial where this game is tested in clinical settings to determine its effectiveness and feasibility as an intervention that actually works for everybody. 

Professional activities

Publications