Games x Mental Health

In collaboration with the Catalan Mental Health Federation, we have developed a citizen science project that analyzes the interactions between people with mental health problems, relatives and caregivers in a participatory manner and wants to provide new knowledge about the community mental health care model. We have studied together social interactions where the various actors involved in mental health interact.

A series of work sessions have shaped a digital platform that allows playing and posing a set of social dilemmas to volunteers from all over Catalonia.

Games x Mental Health project has co-created together with representatives of all the actors in the mental health community. Collectively, the features considered most relevant in the recovery processes have been identified. The identified features have been trust, reciprocity, cooperation or sense of collectivity. A series of games, based on social dilemmas, were designed, which explored these features through the behavior of the players.

The project looks for new ways to promote a process of awareness and self-reflection on the reality of people with mental health problems, a deepening of the importance of the social behavior of each actor, the processes of recovery, an innovative methodology to measure the capacity and mechanisms of social inclusion of the ecosystem and improve the model of community care.

The project includes several aspects of what is known by citizen science:
(1) The participation of the mental health community in all stages of the investigation, including the design of the research itself and (2) the approach of the investigation as a collective action open to all and located in public places and of community social interaction, outside the clinical environments.

The platform has been created and designed by scientists from OpenSystems of the University of Barcelona (project leaders), the Rovira i Virgili University of Tarragona and the Carlos III University of Madrid in collaboration with the Catalan Federation of Mental Health. The project has been sponsored by Abacus.