Using Mobile Apps to Support People with Implementing Coping-relevant Behaviour Change Techniques for Stress Self-management

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Increasing numbers of youths with depression and anxiety symptoms and the lack of enough specilists to help them (Merry, 2012) highlights the need for more relevant, accessible and targeted approaches for treatments. Numerous studies have shown that young people tend to gravitate towards gaming and that serious videogames are effective in changing health-related behaviour (Baranowsky, 2011). It is proposed to tackle the issues of inaccessibility of professionals as well as self motivation to seek out care by developing a serious videogame/mobile app that would diagnose, offer customised treatment and preventative care by establishing resilience to environmental stressors from an early age.The work will be carried out in 3 phases - phase 1 will seek to determine factors contributing to motivation, while phase 2 will explore what types of information would improve a game's or app's effectiveness (eg healthy lifestyle information). Phase 2 will also involve game/app design workshops with youths to ensure the game/app is relevant to this potential user group as well as building and test protoypes. The final phase will involve usability testing of a fully working version of the game/app with follow-up testing over longer periods (3 months+). It is hoped to pursue longitudinal studies as well to establish effectiveness in the longer term.