Can digital games serve as potential intervention or suicide risk?

Abstract

With the rapid growth of advanced digital technology, the use of mobile apps is of increasing interest as a means for providing continuous access to evidence-based digital interventions. Suicide is a socially taboo topic with approximately 800,000 people dying due to suicide every year. As suicidal ideation and suicide risk increase rapidly, gamified intervention is argued to have an important role in the future of mental health care provision and access to these mobile resources may save lives. However, due to the lack of published research to demonstrate that apps can be effective at reducing suicide behaviours, many developers are pushing ahead with apps for suicide prevention with unclear benefits and risks. In this communication piece, issues and challenges of digital interventions will be discussed, hence solution such as using attentional bias modification may be an option for future health care. Overall, the use of digitized gamified intervention holds great promise for a radically new approach to deliver prevention programs, thus overcoming barriers inherent in traditional therapeutic approaches.

Keywords

• suicide prevention
• intervention
• digital games