A game aimed at helping children to cope with anxiety.

The Institute of Mental Health (IMH) has introduced an interactive web-based portal that allows medical professionals, caregivers, and educators to address two common childhood disorders – Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Childhood Anxiety.

The portal, called ROC-N-ASH (www.roc-n-ash.com), allows users access to resources such as role-play computer games, multimedia learning content and video clips for treatment and continual education. 

“The portal aims to leverage on IT to achieve several objectives – provide an easily accessible platform for clinicians and caregivers to collaborate in the management of children’s mental health conditions, and equip caregivers with the knowledge to facilitate early detection and intervention,” said Associate Professor Daniel Fung, Senior Consultant Psychiatrist and Chief, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, with IMH. 

The two child characters in the portal’s interactive games – Roc and Ash – also provide an effective way to engage children in therapy. Designed by educational and clinical psychologists from IMH’s Child Guidance Clinic, the games capture data that will enable clinicians and educators to monitor the child’s progress on specific tasks.

The games capture data that will enable clinicians and educators to monitor the child’s progress on specific tasks.

For example, a role-play computer game that has been developed for anxiety therapy engages the child to learn anxiety management skills through fun and play. The game allows the child to recognise his own anxieties and anxious thoughts and to cope with them with relaxation and cognitive strategies.

The therapeutic content for ADHD consists of multimedia-enriched dialogues and tasks with interactive computer characters. A series of cognitive-based learning activities are also available to help the child with reading and spelling difficulties.  The game monitors and enhances the child’s attention, curbs impulsiveness, and promotes executive functions such as goal setting and self-monitoring.

Caregivers can also tap on the content available on the portal to understand more about the disorders so that they may recognise early signs and seek appropriate intervention for the child. 

Access to content on the portal is free, except for the games which are available at a subscription cost of S$40 per game for six months, with a 25 per cent discount for the first 50 subscribers. 

ADHD resources include games that help children to build up their spelling and literacy skills.

ROC-N-ASH was developed with co-funding from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the Ministry of Health, and The Enterprise Challenge under the Joint Healthcare Call-for-Collaboration programme in 2007. IMH’s two partners, Fujitsu Asia and ASKnLearn, provided the technological and creative expertise respectively.

According to Mr John Siow, Deputy Director for Network Applications at Fujitsu Asia, games or other IT-based applications are potential methods to promote mental well-being in innovative ways. “There is a continuous need to explore how multimedia content could be applied to complement other areas of clinical assessment and treatment,” he said.