Even Buddhist Monks Use a Gong: A Mindfulness Skills Programme for Young People Delivered through the “Mindful Gnats” Computer Game and App.

Introduction

Mindfulness is now a mainstream therapeutic intervention in psychology and has also become pervasive in modern Western culture. This paper describes our first attempts to use technology to support the development of mindfulness and relaxation skills in young people. Mindful Gnats has two components (1) a computer game, and (2) an App. Both are designed to be used in combination by young people aged 9 years and older (O’ Reilly, & Coyle, 2015a; O’ Reilly, Coyle, & Tunney, 2016). The Mindful Gnats computer game introduces a young person to eight mindfulness and relaxation skills across six different game levels. The Mindful Gnats App is designed to support a young person practice those skills in their everyday life between game levels.

The origins of Mindful Gnats is best understood from its context as part of a range of computer games and Apps our team is designing and releasing on a not-for-profit basis that support good mental health in young people. The first game released from our range was a seven level computer game and App designed to be played by a young person and a mental health professional called Pesky gNATs (O’ Reilly & Coyle, 2015b). Pesky gNATs supports the delivery of a Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) intervention for young people with clinically significant Anxiety or Low Mood. The gNATs in the game’s title is a play on words animating a key concept of CBT, Negative Automatic Thoughts (or NATs) as gNATs or little flies. Pesky gNATs progresses by teaching a young person to manage their anxious or depressed mood by understanding and applying the general cognitive model (Beck, & Haigh, 2014). That is, in exploring the “gNATs Island” 3-D game world they learn that gNATs lower our mood or make us anxious and in turn negatively influence our behavior, but can be changed leading to improvements in mood and behavioural functioning. The young person with assistance from their therapist learns how to observe their thinking and spot negative thinking by trapping gNATs, learns how to re-appraise and change their negative thinking by swatting gNATs (cognitive re-structuring). They also learn how to bring about healthy change to their underlying view of themselves, other people, and the world through hunting gNATs back to their Hive and splatting unhelpful Hives (identifying and changing their negative Core Beliefs). Young people complete between session therapy tasks with the assistance of a smartphone App. The Pesky gNATs App is available for free to young people through the iTunes or Google Play stores (O’ Reilly & Coyle, 2015c). The Pesky gNATs App rewards young people for the completion of between therapy tasks by unlocking fun gNAT related games that reinforce CBT concepts as a young person applies them to their everyday life by using the App between sessions. Our website (www.peskygnats.com) provides a portal for mental health professionals to register with us and complete seven hours of on-line video-based training in how to use Pesky gNATs.