The Cheat Code

Gamifying mental health helps patients beat the final boss

Anyone who’s played video games knows you typically have to face down a final boss to advance to the next level or beat the game. It might take multiple tries before you triumph, but you get so caught up in strategy and tactics it’s easy to lose yourself in the moment and get in a flow state. Before you know it, hours may have passed, and you’ve spent them with laser focus.

In real life, the final boss in mental health can be much more challenging: PTSD, depression, and anxiety all come to mind. Gamifying treatment brings tangible results, thanks in no small part to the level of engagement gamification fosters in comparison to traditional therapy.

A Matter of Motivation

No matter how desirous a patient is of having better mental health and quality of life, there’s no disputing that certain aspects of traditional therapy can be monotonous. Some patients start to tune out and see diminishing returns, leaving them and practitioners frustrated.

Gamified mental health treatment, conversely, can often be customized to the patient and engage all their senses. Immersive VR has delivered great benefits for military veterans suffering from PTSD, for example.

With a focus on positive psychology and emotional well-being, Happify says that 86% of frequent users get happier within two months on the app. Clinical studies back up the claim, reporting improvement in depression, anxiety, and resilience in randomized trials. With enough training, Happify promises brains can adopt new thought patterns and learn to default to positive thoughts rather than negative ones.

SuperBetter users can play individually or as a group to enhance their self-efficacy and feelings of social support. Players can create a secret identity and recruit friends to compete in preset challenges or build their own. It’s often used in K-12 settings to encourage kids to discuss and be proactive about mental health, as well as being a popular employer-sponsored wellness activity.

Created by researchers at the University of Auckland, SPARX presents a fantasy world where players help characters complete quests that build emotional resilience. In one or two levels per week, students can build up their self-reliance and feel just a bit better about their mental health.

When you log into MoodMission, the app asks how you’re feeling then suggests five quick missions to complete based on your response. It checks back in after you’ve completed the missions to see how effective they were. With more use, the algorithm gets better at recommending missions to elevate a user’s mood. MoodMission’s expeditions section has modules for facing down specific phobias such as fear of flying and of public speaking.

Sometimes, we all need a reminder to practice a little self-care. Much like a Tamagotchi, the “birb” that Finch players grows and thrives the more care it receives. Avatars for the players themselves, the customized birbs do better whenever the user performs an act of self-care. They can send supportive messages and good vibes to other players and collect rewards for each quest completed.

Virtual Exposure

Facing down your worst fear can be daunting, but exposure therapy for specific phobias has a success rate over 90%. It’s often the only practical treatment for phobias. Gamifying the exposure can help patients push through fear when exposure to the real thing is too intense or impractical.

Virtual reality exposure therapy platforms like oVRcome can help patients with fear of flying, fear of certain animals, and claustrophobia or agoraphobia. Because of cost, location, or stigma, most people with phobias like these let them go untreated and they can become worse over time. VRET can make treatment much more accessible.

VRET has even been used to treat alcohol and nicotine use disorders, with the aim of inducing cravings in players without them being able to take a drink or smoke. They instead work through the cravings, learning how to let them subside without succumbing to them.

Similar methods are used for social anxiety disorder, simulating social situations in which players interact with virtual people. Combat veterans with PTSD have found VRET helpful in letting them confront their trauma in a safe environment,

“It has especially been shown to be successful for people with PTSD, anxiety, and chronic pain,” Lucy Dunning, a licensed counselor who uses VRET in her practice, told Forbes.

Games like Fight Your Fears allow users to do graded exposure therapy, starting off with milder exposures like seeing a picture of a small spider to more challenging ones like watching a video of a tarantula. Fight Your Fears is designed for kids ages 11-16 and encourages players to involve family, friends, and medical professionals in the game for support.

VRET is typically most effective when combined with cognitive behavioral therapy and drug treatment when appropriate. Together, these therapies help patients beat that final boss and advance to the next level of a healthy and productive life.