Project information
| Status | Finalist |
| URL | Go to website |
| Category | Health Health promotion |
| Country | Australia |
| Operational areas | Urban, Rural |
| Target groups | Youth |
| Fixed connection | DSL, IDSN, Cable |
| Access points | Government office, Business, Home, School, Library, Telecenter, Cafe |
| Interact | Landline Phone, Desktop Computer, |
| Software License Types | Proprietary |
Project location
Random images Challenge 2008
Reach Out Central
- Brief description
- Reach Out Central (ROC) combines evidence-based mental health content with engaging design and online gaming technology to create an interactive environment that enables young people to identify and work through issues such as depression, anger and anxiety, increasing their ability to cope with mental health difficulties.
- Vision, Objectives and Goals
Of the 1 in 5 young people with a mental health problem, only 29% seek clinical help. Young men in particular don’t access traditional mental health services such as face-to-face and phone-based counselling. Instead they turn to the internet for advice and support. Research demonstrates that online interventions that provide evidence-based information are effective in reducing mental health difficulties. Reach Out Central (ROC) is an online game-based youth mental health education project that aims to reduce mental health difficulties in youth. The objectives of ROC are to:
Increase mental health literacy
Increase skills to change thoughts and solve problems
- How does ICT contribute to the organisational objectives
- ROC takes advantage of the internet to bring young people information in a form that is relevant, appealing and highly accessible. It can be accessed at any time and is free to all users. Inspire Foundation first developed and evaluated a prototype of the intervention in 2005. The evaluation found ROC was effective but that it needed to be more complex and engaging to have a long-term impact. As a result, we worked closely with gaming industry experts, our web development partners, mental health experts and young people to develop the new version. This addresses the potential barriers by: 1) Being online – young people’s preferred help-seeking environment. It also uses flash technology to make it as accessible as possible, even to those on slower broadband connections. 2) Being targeted at, and promoted to, young men through an associated advertising campaign. 3) Adapting a psychological intervention shown to be effective in reducing mental health difficulties in schools. ROC utilises a content management system to provide flexibility and updates to the plotlines within the game, enabling authors to add new locations, characters & stories at any time. Player can then return to see these new and evolving scenarios. The game is based upon web-services (developed in .NET) which are called by the Flash based client. Future releases could produce a presentation of the game for mobiles - enabling users to play the game on a PC and then continue that game while using their mobile. In-game events are integrated with the real world via email and SMS; if a player is reacting in a particularly negative way to in-game characters then the game prompts the player to receive SMS tips on positive-thinking. All player responses are tracked, and assigned against emotions (such as happy) and then aggregated into a graph and animated iconography. This visually presents responses affect in-game mood which then changes how characters speak to the player and what conversations they can engage in.
- Transferability
- ROC could potentially be developed by a range of different types of organisations, if they were able to partner with appropriately skilled organisations and had the required funding. There is potential to adapt ROC to explore issues from a wide range of different fields. For example, issues explored could include obesity or workers rights. The major cost has been the planning and game engine build. Once this is done, adding on new storylines can be added with more reasonable economic and human resource costs.
- Project summary
ROC, as far as we are aware, is a world first. It uses sophisticated and innovative technical and creative design and implementation that is familiar and engaging to young people. A game engine allows complex game play – drawing on features from successful games such as The Sims and Grand Theft Auto. A content management system allows the game to be regularly updated, characters added and storylines extended. ROC takes advantage of the internet to bring young people information in a form that is relevant, appealing and highly accessible. It can be accessed at any time and is free to all users.
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