Introduction

Considerations for Designing Context-Aware Mobile Apps for Mental Health Interventions

“…These two features are much sought after by actors (therapists). In other words, gamification strategies applied to mobile applications for mental health interventions can be considered as “activators of social and health change” , as experimentally observed by Spallazzo and Mariani [56]. The authors also pointed out that gamification can be considered as a practice capable of impacting both designers (or therapists) and players (or patients) to establish multifaceted relationships between them.…”

“…The intention to use gamification in mental health interventions is to exploit its inherent ability to immerse a player (patient) in a story (intervention) to convey a key message and/or achieve a goal. For example, metaphors can help therapists to design an engaging game story for an intervention, such as Spallazzo and Mariani’s [56] location-based mobile game that turned the symptoms of depression and their consequences into a metaphorical story to improve the learning experience and increase the awareness of healthy people (players) with mental health illnesses. Other examples of gamified interventions for mental health are already being used [57].…”