Stress Relief From a Smartphone App

Playing a therapeutic smartphone game app 25 minutes a day can reduce anxiety levels in stressed individuals, according to a recent study.

According to the study, published in Clinical Psychological Science, a new application was developed by researchers that incorporated scientifically supported and proven intervention techniques into short games-like activities that could be played on a smartphone.

The games are based around a relatively new cognitive approach physiologists have been using to treat anxiety known as attention-bias modification training (ABMT).

The ABMT smartphone games allow patients to treat themselves by training their mind to turn away from perceived threats, and focus instead on non-threatening stimulus.

Approaches like this have been used before, particularly in the treatment of patients with severe eating disorders, who must work to train their mind to stop fixating on negative body images and facial expressions such as disgusts and to focus more on these images' positive counterparts.

To determine how well the app would work as a therapeutic tool, researchers selected 78 participants who exhibited high social anxiety tendencies through a survey and invited them to play the game.

Half this group was asked to play the game for either 25 or 45 minutes and then give a short speech on video -- which served as a stressful social situation. The other half was asked to play an unrelated game that did not employ ABMT therapeutic strategies and then give the same speech.

The amount of nervous behavior exhibited during each speech was then assessed after participants reported how they felt about their experience.

At the conclusion of the study, the researcher reported that users of the ABMT app showed much less nervous behavior and reported less negative feelings about the experience, compared to their counterparts who played a regular app game.

As observed nervous behavior on video cannot exactly be quantified, the researchers were unable to statistically express their findings, but they were able to conclude that even playing the therapeutic app for 25 minutes appears to have immediately noticeable effects in lowing a person's sensitivity to stressful social stimuli.

The study was published in Clinical Psychological Science on March 6.