COpID: Combat COVID-19 dysfunctional coping

Inspiration

The global pandemic known as COVID-19 has triggered governmental quarantines and other measures in the interest of public health. Although necessary, the mandated lockdowns abruptly and dramatically altered people’s daily routines, travel, and leisure activities to a degree unexperienced by most living people outside of war zones.

Given these changes, a parallel pandemic of direct and indirect psychological and social effects is already emerging with significant increases, particularly in anxiety and depression. Indeed, common psychological reactions to previous quarantines include post-traumatic symptoms, confusion, and anger. Vulnerable (European) citizens will especially have more severe psychological reactions and dysfunctional coping behaviours as a result of the pandemic. These groups may include either those who suffer from pre-existing difficulties and living conditions – notably isolation – or newly emerging and complicating factors such as job-loss. Health care employees, elderly citizens and young children may also belong to these groups in need. The current situation is likely to lead to several dysfunctional coping behaviours, including lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating, suppression of emotions, lack of engagement in essential life areas or smoking and alcohol consumption, among others.

Medical and pharmacological treatments are hindered by these dysfunctional coping behaviours, especially when health care systems are currently reaching their limits with the COVID-19 pandemic. New approaches involving technologically supported/delivered programs can identify, prevent and support the effective and timely management of situations (internal and external). Indeed, some of our previous work has demonstrated the use of Avatar-led digital interventions to result in statistically and clinically significant improvements in functionality, quality of life, pain management, smoking cessation, and decreases in stress and dysfunctional coping behaviours. Further, a multi-user virtual reality program originated at our labs offers new opportunities for interventions where the therapist and client are remotely located and able to meet in a therapeutic virtual environment.

What it does

This project aims to harness the advantages of technology to provide effective, personalized, behavioural health interventions, when and where the person needs them, to overcome obstacles that prevent living a functional life, especially as a result of the pandemic lockdowns and aftermath. Using avatar and virtual reality digital interventions we could reach more people and would be an optimal tool for secondary prevention of anxiety, depressive and other symptoms, as avatars could be used for adequate, appealing and motivating prompts to prevent avoidance and passivity, a syndrome that is likely to occur on a large-scale societal level. We are ready to develop this further and broaden our reach to serve more citizens in Europe and beyond. Knowledge gained through this project is expected to be utilized in innovative, empirically-driven public policy and prevention efforts to decrease the financial and societal burden of mental health problems due to COVID-19 in Europe.

How we built it

Ionic (ionicframework.com), Android Studio (https://developer.android.com/studio), Unity game engine, Character animation is performed using the Rokoko smart suit.

Challenges we ran into

Combining the best psychological know-how with technology has not been easy given that we needed to develop a common language base. Finding experts in each of the fields involved that can transform ideas into usable, feasible and engaging products was a challenge initially.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

The unique aspect of our program is that it combines the most up-to-date empirically supported psychotherapeutic knowledge coupled with theoretical technology perspectives (e.g. gamification and persuasive technology theory). As a result, it has been found to lead to effective behaviour change and help individuals cope with a variety of mental health difficulties. Our avatar-led digital interventions have already demonstrated effectiveness for various mental health and coping behaviour problems (e.g. highest rates of smoking cessation reported in the literature) in empirical studies and randomized clinical trials. Some of our peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published in high quality and impact journals, while we continue to develop the programs further and test them. Users evaluate our applications as acceptable and profoundly appealing and engaging. Also, our initial work has received various awards, e.g. from the European Council and Pompidou’s group and the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

What we learned

To develop a useful, engaging program that individuals will want to use and be motivated to return to and utilize in the long run to benefit from the provided intervention, it needs to be grounded in state-of-the-art psychological and technological theories. Thus a genuinely multidisciplinary team is necessary, something we have been forming over the years.

What's next for COpID: Combat COVID-19 dysfunctional coping through effective digital psychological interventions

Given that a lot of the ground-up testing has taken place, the next part is to finalize the products for market use. We would like to develop a reliable business and marketing plan and be able to disseminate the intervention widely to the public and particularly to vulnerable individuals and those in need, especially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our established networks with the Public Sector (e.g., Ministries of Health), NGOs (e.g., UNESCO), Industry (e.g., Brain Products, Niilo Maki Institute), and Clinics (e.g., SUVAG) can maximize the options offered for quick dissemination and use of the final application. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that is already available not only ensures that the app provides value to end-users but also that it is technically sound. Thus, it guarantees the completed version of the product concept.