Creation of an immersive, game-based and intelligent system to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on children’s mental health

由于新冠肺炎，英国估计有480万名幼儿园和小学学龄儿童被限制在家中。众所周知，与长期隔离相关的压力源会对儿童的心理健康产生深远的直接和长期影响。在封锁之前，三分之一的儿童心理健康服务被取消了。在封锁后，当他们已经负担过重时，转诊率可能会增加。我们的项目是一个帮助孩子理解和处理自己情绪的手机游戏。孩子们被鼓励定期自我报告他们的情绪。然后，他们通过智能策划和个性化的训练练习进行比赛。这些练习是基于有证据支持的技术，如基于正念的认知行为疗法（MCBT），以解决压力和创伤。每个练习都是由故事驱动的，并通过增强现实和触觉反馈等沉浸式技术得到增强。通过玩耍，孩子们将学会应对具有挑战性的情绪，建立韧性，并对他人的情绪做出反应。Insight数据通过应用程序呈现给父母，以便照顾者更好地了解孩子的情绪状态，并做出适当的反应。我们的目标是：*提供一种低成本、可获得的解决方案，以减轻和改善在封锁期间和封锁后受到covid -19相关压力因素影响的儿童的心理健康；*通过深入了解孩子的健康状况，减轻因近期生活方式改变、工作模式改变和家庭经济损失而带来的父母压力；并通过为不见人影的病人提供廉价、方便的解决方案，减轻NHS儿童心理健康服务在封锁后的负担。从长远来看，手机游戏将经过临床验证，以便它可以作为临床实践的一部分可靠地使用。这个游戏可以用来更容易和廉价地筛选和跟踪儿科精神健康患者的长期结果。这个项目的创新之处包括：*能够策划一系列嵌入游戏的心理健康练习，以适应儿童的特殊需求；*应用沉浸式技术改进心理健康技术，提高儿童有意义地参与的可能性；并提供经常更新的见解，以帮助家长（最终是医生和教师）为儿童设计量身定制的干预措施。扩展的影响：这个项目的扩展版本将允许我们开始在一个可操作的环境中鉴定我们的系统。这将涉及在以精神卫生为重点的诊所、学校和儿童中心进行初步实施。自从实现了我们项目的早期目标以来，我们已经收到了来自英国主要儿童慈善机构和7000多所学校的广泛兴趣。通过允许我们扩展和测试系统以满足这一需求，额外的资金将把这个项目的技术准备从TRL4/5转移到TRL8。其次，它将帮助我们提前在全球发布我们的技术，为市场做好准备。这将使我们能够比项目路线图中建议的更快地开始对我们的技术进行商业开发。

An estimated 4.8M nursery and primary school-aged children across the UK are confined to their homes due to Covid-19. Stressors associated with prolonged isolation are known to have a profound immediate and long-term impact on children's mental health. Before lockdown, 1/3 of children's mental health services were defunded. Referral rates are likely to increase post-lockdown, when they are already overburdened.Our project is a mobile game that helps children understand and process their emotions. Children are incentivised to regularly self-report their emotions. Then, they play through intelligently curated and personalised training exercises. These exercises are based on evidence-backed techniques, like mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy (MCBT), to address stress and trauma.Each exercise is story-driven and enhanced by immersive technologies like augmented reality and haptic feedback. Through play, children will learn to cope with challenging emotions, build resilience and respond to emotions in others. Insight data is presented to parents through the app so that caregivers can better understand their child's emotional state and respond appropriately.Our objectives are to:* provide a low-cost, accessible solution to mitigate and improve children's mental health, where impacted by Covid-19-related stressors during and post-lockdown;* reduce parental stress associated with recent lifestyle changes, changing working patterns and family financial loss by providing insight into a child's wellbeing; and* ease the burden on NHS children's mental health services following the lockdown by providing an inexpensive, accessible solution for unseen patients.Long-term, the mobile game will undergo clinical validation so that it can be used reliably as part of clinical practice. The game could be used to more easily and inexpensively screen and track the long-term outcomes of paediatric mental health patients.Innovations in this project include:* the ability to curate a repertoire of mental health exercises, embedded in games, that adjust to a child's specific needs;* the application of immersive technologies to improve mental health techniques, to enhance children's likelihood to meaningfully engage; and* the provision of frequently-updated insights to assist parents (and ultimately doctors and teachers) in designing tailored interventions for children.Effects of extension for impact:The extended version of this project would allow us to begin qualifying our system in an operational environment. This would involve initial implementation across mental health-focused clinics, schools and children's centres. Since meeting the early objectives of our project, we have received widespread interest in our solution from major children's charities and over 7000+ schools across the UK. By allowing us to expand and test the system to service this demand, the additional funding would shift the technological readiness of this project from TRL4/5 to TRL8. Second, it would help us achieve market readiness for a global release of our technology earlier. This would allow us to begin commercially-exploiting our technology sooner than proposed in our project roadmap.