Towards Accessible Mental Healthcare through Augmented Reality and Self-Assessment Tools

Mental health presents a growing public health concern worldwide with mental illnesses affecting people’s quality of life and causing an economic impact on societies. The rapidly increasing demand for mental healthcare is calling for new  ways of disseminating mental health knowledge and for supporting people with mental health illnesses. As an alternative to traditional mental health therapies and treatments, mental health self-assessment and self-management tools become widely available to the public. While such tools can potentially offer more timely personalised support, individuals seeking help are faced with the challenge of making an appropriate choice from an exhaustive number of online tools, mobile apps, and support programs. In this article, we present myGRaCE – a self-assessment and self-management mental health tool made accessible to users via Augmented Reality technologies. The advantage of the system is that it provides a direct pathway to relevant and reliable mental health resources and offers a positive incentive and interventions for at-risk users. The system offers service users the resources to gain a better understanding of their mental state and increase control of their mental health conditions via self-monitoring and self-help.