Earlier this year the British prime minister Theresa May pledged to provide more support for those suffering from mental health issues.  Whilst much of the support she proposed came via somewhat traditional means, there are a number of startups providing innovation solutions in the area.

For instance, one team of researchers have developed a new app-based game, called Project: EVO, which they hope will help older adults tackle depression.

The game, which was documented in a paper to accompany the project, targets the cognitive conditions that tend to underpin depression.

“We found that moderately depressed people do better with apps like this because they address or treat correlates of depression,” the researchers say.

Gaming our way to better mental health

The study found tat people using the game showed improvements in their cognitive performance compared to those in a behavioral therapy control group.  This improvement coincided with improvements in mood and self-reported function.

“While EVO was not directly designed to treat depressive symptoms; we hypothesized that there may indeed be beneficial effects on these symptoms by improving cognitive issues with targeted treatment, and so far, the results are promising,” they say.

The logic was that people diagnosed with depression that are over 60 years of age often have difficulty focusing attention on personal goals.  They report difficulties concentrating because their worries cause their mind to wander.  The game is thus designed to help.

Of course, the project isn’t the only effort to use games to improve our mental health.  Back in 2015, a team of British researchers applied game based thinking to develop a tool that will allow mental health service users to explore difficult and challenging situations in a virtual environment, before then putting their skills into practice in the real world.

The game focused on the forensic mental health system, within which users have committed serious offenses.  It aimed to provide players with a novel means of experimenting with decision making and responding to a range of scenarios, whether that’s being offered drugs or the various other moral dilemmas the patients may face.

“The idea behind the game was to provide a platform to support service user preparation for discharge by practicing the challenging scenarios they face in their everyday lives. The prototype game was developed with, trialled and evaluated by service users and providers and we found that there was confidence that a serious game would be a useful tool,” the developers say.

Both projects are nice examples of how we can take creative approaches to tackling a very difficult issue.