Outpatient mental healthcare company Onebright has launched a gamified mental health training app.
The app runs a programme which aims to help business leaders and managers develop life enhancing techniques to support themselves and their teams with daily life pressures at work and home.
Partnering with game-based training solutions provider Attensi, the training programme combines advanced 3D modelling with insight into human behaviour and psychology, allowing business leaders and managers to access a virtual world of mental health modules and topics.
The programme is launching with five foundation sessions that will focus on the definition of mental health and mental health in the workplace, recognising the signs, symptoms, and triggers of common mental health conditions, having impactful conversations, supporting others and planning for success, and signposting.
During the training, users complete various Q&A tests before moving on to engage in realistic scenario-based dialogues with a virtual employee avatar. The Attensi programme provides users with scores and feedback, including displaying the optimal answers and responses, meaning they can improve as they play and track their progress.
Accessed via an app on a mobile phone, tablet or desktop, the training aims to help improve the knowledge retention of leaders and line managers and give them the confidence and skills they need to improve the management of mental health conditions in the workplace, to master the right behaviours, and to help colleagues.
Speaking to Health & Protection, Tim Dunn, chief commercial officer at Onebright, revealed the company had initially worked with Attensi internally on its own training modules and saw some great results across its business.
He added that in the same way an individual habitually returns to popular apps such as Candy Crush, they will improve their abilities as they succeed and get better at the games.
“It’s that type of emotional involvement driven by repetition by going back into the platform that really separates the impact that this has over and above set learning programmes where you have an environment that you go into, run through a standard e-learning course for 15 minutes and the course is completed, you get your accreditation, and you move on.
“With the gamification dynamics, it’s about that ability to learn through your involvement, the interaction with realistic settings and characters within the game and it is this that really drives a better result.”
Dunn added that the app also addresses some of the issues employers may currently have with remote workforces as it can be accessed round-the-clock and interacted with at the user’s leisure.
In terms of rollout, Dunn revealed that while the app is initially being launched initially in the UK, it can be adapted to different cultures and languages so there is scope for the app to be used across multinational populations at large corporates.
“That is something that Attensi do at the moment with other partners of theirs in different learning settings, so it’s initially a UK launch directly via Onebright,” Dunn continued.
“We’re talking to a number of partners of ours, including leading private medical insurers, group income protection providers and occupational health providers, about rolling out our mental health training to their clients too.
“We’re really excited about the unique e-learning platform that we have developed and the rollout of it. We’ll be working directly with corporates to deliver mental health training to their managers and business leaders, as well as through our partners to their clients.”