Speakers
Description
Depression is a common mental health problem in modern society, which causes patients to lose interest and motivation in everyday activities. With the influence of social distancing measures due to COVID-19, social isolation and uncertainty have increased, leading to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety[1]. Currently, South Korea has the highest suicide rate among OECD countries for over ten years[2]. Depression, which is one of the psychological factors, is closely related to the suicide rate[3]. To address this issue, we propose a medical walking habit-forming game.
In the game, users perform designated missions and encourage physical activity such as walking and running to improve the interests, motivation, and social rehabilitation of patients with depression in a fun way. The four main functions of the game are as follows: First, the user takes a depression scale test and collects psychological information to create a puppy (a new character). Second, the game measures the user's walking distance and displays the number of steps and distance traveled through the walking function. Third, the collection function encourages more outdoor activities to collect resources such as phrases, puppies, and tools by moving to locations marked with question marks on the map. Fourth, a reward system is implemented to encourage more outdoor activities to collect more collections.
By improving the puppy's appearance and health with the rewards obtained while walking and increasing the experience points, users can level up. The depression scale test is repeated at a certain level of experience points, and the results are inputted into an AI model that has been trained in advance to precisely judge and store the user's depression and psychological health status. This data is stored in the database, and the frequency and distance of walking the puppy, the so-called quest, become the judgment index. To keep the puppy healthy, users log in to regularly walk and feed the puppy, gaining the healing effect of therapy[4]. Thus, the motivation to continue the game forms a continuous therapeutic habit, and the participation in daily life adapts the resilience and self-esteem of the users.
References
[1] Juri Kim, Mikyoung Lee. (2022). A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Interventions for the Relief of Depression in the COVID-19 Pandemic . Crisisonomy, 18(5), 29-38.
[2] Kim, J., Park, sang-mahn and Kim, gang-hoon (2017) “A Study of Causal Loop Analysis for Suicide Protection of Korean Society: focusing on the adolescent,” Korean System Dynamics Review. Korean System Dynamics Society.
[3] Choi Myugmin, Kim Doeyoon, Kim Kaduc. (2015). “An Study of Psychological Autopsy of Suicides in Korean Rural Area”. Korean Social Welfare, Vol. 67, No. 1: 58-59.
[4] Woong Choi (2022). Verification of healing effect by VR pet in VR space. Journal of Digital Content Society, 23(9), 1795-1801.
| Keywords | depressive disorder, digital therapeutics, artificial intelligence |
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