Depression and anxiety among college students have been on the rise globally. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has emerged as an empirically reinforced and effective treatment. However, factors like cost, lack of resources, misguided prioritization and stigmatization of mental health issues in the Global South limit students’ access to psychotherapy. While technology can bridge this gap, research shows current self-guided mHealth apps for CBT are not always evidence-based and have limited efficacy compared to therapist-guided alternatives. In this paper, we explore whether interactive storytelling and other gamification mechanisms can increase the efficacy of a self-guided mHealth app, while drawing from empirically supported CBT protocols. We designed an mHealth application with contextualised storylines to help students learn psychological concepts and better identify the negative patterns in their thoughts. We present the results of a 3-arm randomized controlled trial conducted to assess the effect of this application compared to active and inactive control conditions.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517603
Smartphone overuse is related to a variety of issues such as lack of sleep and anxiety. We explore the application of Self-Affirmation Theory on smartphone overuse intervention in a just-in-time manner. We present \projectname{}, a just-in-time intervention technique that integrates two components: an in-situ typing-based unlock process to improve user engagement, and self-affirmation-based typing content to enhance effectiveness. We hypothesize that the integration of typing and self-affirmation content can better reduce smartphone overuse. We conducted a 10-week within-subject field experiment (N=54) and compared \projectname{} against two baselines: one only showing the self-affirmation content (a common notification-based intervention), and one only requiring typing non-semantic content (a state-of-the-art method). \projectname{} reduces app usage by over 50\%, and both app opening frequency and usage duration by over 25\%, all significantly outperforming baselines. \projectname{} can potentially be used in other domains where an intervention may benefit from integrating self-affirmation exercises with an engaging just-in-time mechanism.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517476
Past research has demonstrated that accounts of trusted others can provide additional context into real world behavior relevant to clinical decision-making and patient engagement. Our research investigates the Social Sensing System, a concept which leverages trusted other feedback for veterans in therapy for PTSD. In our two phase study, we work with 10 clinicians to develop text-message queries and realistic scenarios to present to patients and trusted others. We then present the results in the form of a storyboard to 10 veterans with PTSD and 10 trusted others and gather feedback via semi-structured interview and survey. We find that while trusted other feedback may provide a unique and useful perspective, key design features and considerations of underlying relationships must be considered. We present our findings and utilize the mechanisms and conditions framework to assess the power dynamics of systems such as social sensing in the mental health realm.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517513
Two decades of focus on User Experience has yielded an array of digital technologies that help people experience, understand and share emotions. Although the effects of specific technologies upon emotion have been well studied, less is known about how people actively appropriate and combine the full range of devices, apps and services at their disposal to deliberately manage emotions in everyday life. We conducted a one-week diary study in which 23 adults recorded interactions between their emotions and technology use. They reported using a diverse range of emotion-shaping tools and strategies as part of coping with daily challenges, managing routines, and pursuing work and social goals. We analyse these data in the light of psychological theories of emotion. Our findings point to the significance of digital emotion regulation as a powerful perspective to inform wider debates about the impacts of technology on social and emotional well-being.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517573
Traditionally, game designers have driven the development process of psychotherapeutic games with psychotherapists playing a consultant role. In contrast, our study explores psychotherapists independently designing digitally gamified psychotherapy. Our workshop participants consisted of six psychotherapists who created gamified digital therapies with the design prompt of anxiety disorder. We analyze the resulting six prototypes from a game design and psychotherapy perspective. We present insights into strategies for digitally gamifying therapy and identify challenges and opportunities for the future of gamified psychotherapy, grounded in the experiences of psychotherapists designing such therapies. This study also reflects on the use of user-friendly development tools for independently curating gamified digital therapies, especially by non-technical users such as psychotherapists.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517437