H.appy Ninja: reduce depression whilst playing games

People with depression or a vulnerability to depression have a bias in brain processes such that they subconsciously focus on negative images that they view far more than positive ones, a reversal of situation with non depressed people. This bias in attention is thought to be one of the cognitive (brain thinking) processes underlying depression and to make people vulnerable to depression in the future.

Studies have shown that these biases in depressed people, can be potentially corrected using computerized training programs and these are now being tested clinically. However, they are complex and not necessarily enjoyable for participants to use.

Our proposal is to develop a range of freely available games in which the principles of emotional bias modification are inbuilt, but where the game experience does not differ from that commonly experienced with iOS and other mobile games. These games will be developed for the general population, and especially for young people. The aim is to reduce the overall severity of negative emotional biases among users potentially reducing their likelihood of suffering depression in the future - a vaccination for the brain.

Modifying emotional biases in this way uses an approach where attention is deliberately and persistently driven towards positive stimuli, in the case of our game, happy faces. Subjects are required to actively ignore negative stimuli (sad and angry faces).

For the first game we have develop in this way, we have modified the popular 'fruit ninja' game. We use happy faces that the players have to respond to and sad and angry faces instead of the bombs in the original game. Players, instead of 'slashing' faces are required to tick through the happy faces.

The planned submitted version is an initial draft - we will eventually build in a system to track individual players mood so we can evaluate the overall success of playing these games. We will adapt this design to a series of other games to maximise the use of the approach.

NB: I am submitting this in the hope that the application will be accepted in spite of the final code not being ready to submit - this should be available in the next couple of days but delays with the coding process over the Christmas / holiday period have not allowed the full submission to be ready today. The program is being initiated by myself as a academic psychiatrist and I have had to contract the initial coding work.