Coggi

Early intervention is key to promoting positive well-being and mental health for a digitally native generation

50% of mental health problems are established by age 14 and 75% by age 241.

The World Health Organisation also states that depression is a leading cause of illness and disability among adolescents and suicide is the second leading cause of death in 15 to 29 year olds.  The Children’s Society’s recent report suggests that in the UK, children and young people have become increasingly unhappy.

Yet, existing solutions are focused on late stage treatment rather than prevention and are designed with an adult mindset, not for a digitally native generation. Young adolescents are naturally inclined to use more engaging gaming experiences and social networks, so current solutions are not capturing their attention.

What if designing a game with emerging technology, blended with psychology exercises could capture the attention of young adolescents? Introducing…

Coggi believe that early intervention is the key to establishing good mental health habits and that young adolescents will not only benefit from the psychological content, but also will enjoy using it to promote daily positive well-being and good mental health.

Meet Coggi – Coggi is a game for digital natives using Augmented Reality gaming experiences and validated positive psychological interventions to foster positive, daily habits. We are prototyping Coggi and testing the product with the target audience.

Coggi (formerly known as UniversityMe) is passionate about developing products to help young people develop realistic optimism, self-efficacy and emotional resiliency skills to promote good life-long mental well-being.

Pep Stonor has just completed her MSc at Bucks New University in Applied Positive Psychology. Her research focused on the student experience of secondary school well-being and mental health programmes in the UK and how they prepare students for university. Dr Kate Gee is a chartered Psychologist and a senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Performance Science, which is a joint venture at the Royal College of Music and Imperial Medical School where she also holds an Honorary Research Fellowship. Kate specialises in applied research within careers in the arts, social identity and well-being, and student mental health.

We are looking for a partner school to further test the product with a user base before launch, research partners to help validate and design new custom-made exercises, as well as funding partners, in the months ahead.

¹Kessler RC, Berglund P, Demler O, Jin R, Merikangas KR, Walters EE. (2005). Lifetime Prevalence and Age-of-Onset Distributions of DSM-IV Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62 (6) pp. 593-602. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.62.6.593.