Who Said Playing A Mobile Gaming App Was All Bad?

According a study published in the Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, gaming for 25 minutes on a science-based app can reduce anxiety in individuals who suffer from stress.

With gaming and apps become a regular part of most people’€™s everyday lives, finding solutions to healthcare issues through fun technology is both innovative and efficient. We already have apps that teach children how to count, puzzle games proven to improve cognitive memory, so why not have an app that can reduce the trauma of anxiety for those who suffer from stress?

The game played is based on a new alternative cognitive treatment for anxiety ABMT or attention-bias modification training which ‘€œhas the potential to reduce treatment barriers in light of the economic and practical barriers to treatment’€. The ABMT treatment trains patients to focus on non-threatening stimulus (such as a neutral or happy face) instead of focusing on a threatening stimulus (such as an angry face).

The study aimed to address the issue that many people who suffer from anxiety or stress do not seek or get the treatment they need. A gaming app that makes treatment more accessible, discreet and fun could help many suffers. It may even help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health.

The study showed that playing the ABMT game for 25-45 minutes enabled highly stress prone participants to speak fairly calmly and exhibit less anxious behaviour on camera (when being on camera would usually cause these participants high levels of stress) compared to those that did not play the ABMT game. This was also reflected in the feedback the participants gave themselves after being filmed on camera.

Further investigation is being done into whether shorter sessions of ABMT gaming, similar to the length of time we usually play mobile app games for, would result in such a positive outcome for anxiety suffers.

With development of ABMT gaming still in the research stages, an ABMT gaming app that prevents anxiety may still be a while off. Nonetheless, this research offers a new perspective on ways to treat and prevent anxiety and stress for sufferers. Furthermore, it offers a new angle to the gaming technology scene. The researchers ‘€œhope to revolutionise how we treat mental illness and how we view our own mental health’ but from a tech perspective, this research could revolutionise the way app and gaming developers develop their apps in the future.

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