Abstract

Using the metrics of the World Health Organisation, the Global Burden of Disease Study has found that mental health difficulties are currently the leading cause of disability in developed countries. Projections also indicate that the global burden of mental health difficulties will continue to rise in the coming decades. The human and economic costs of this trend will be substantial. In this talk I will discuss how effectively designed interactive systems, developed through collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts, can play a significant role in helping to address this challenge. I will discuss some of the difficulties associated with designing in mental healthcare areas and will then describe the strategies I have applied in developing and evaluating two exploratory systems. Personal Investigator is a 3D computer game designed to support adolescent interventions. PlayWrite is a flexible game authoring tool that allows mental healthcare professionals to create games that can be used in a wide variety of interventions. The results of initial clinical evaluations of games created with PlayWrite will be presented. Having presented my previous research, I will discuss several new directions for research in this area and also recent work by other researchers.

This talk is open to all.