Target

Project Description

Approximately 1 in 20 adults has a chronic mental health problem which seriously and persistently impacts on their life. Setting goals, and targeting interventions towards meeting them, is widely seen as an important and legitimate focus in mental health care. Users of goal based outcomes to plan therapy find that discussing and framing goals is a constructive and interactive process. However, there are a number of challenges with setting goals in mental health. We aim to address these challenges by using technology to assist in setting individual person goals for recovery. TARGET will develop a new technology-assisted approach to goal setting which will involve people interacting, over a few sessions, with an onscreen virtual character - an interactive virtual agent (IVA). The aim of this will be to provide a non-threatening “conversation” with the technology to help patients set personally relevant goals and frame them in a way which strengthens the goals’ legitimacy to professionals. This grant will fund the preparatory work involving literature review and development work with stakeholders - professional and patient / public.

This is funded by the Sheffield Health & Social Care NHS Foundation Research Capability Funding. £20,000. In collaboration with Prof Chris Burton (PI, Academic Unit of Primary Medical Care), Prof Scott Weich (ScHARR), Dr Chris Blackmore (ScHARR)

People & Partners

In collaborations with Dr Chris Burton<h3>, Brigitte Delaney, Dr Kat Easton, Sara Abdi, Prof Scott Weich, Chris Blackmore.

Funders

This project has received funding by the SHSC RCF 17-18 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH RESEARCH.