Testing a gamified Spider App to reduce spider fear and avoidance

Mobile applications are increasingly part of mental health programs and various apps have been developed for treating anxiety disorders. Typically, they aim to improve anxiety symptoms via established CBT techniques, such as exposure principles, which are considered extremely unpleasant for fearful individuals. We combined in a mobile application exposure principles with gamification elements (e.g. narrative background, level progression, points, and feedback). These elements should increase the motivation for confronting spider images and decrease the experienced distress. To evaluate the application, two groups of spider-fearful individuals played either the Spider App (experimental group) or a non-spider associated app (control group) twice a day for approximately 12 min for 7 days. After this week, participants of the experimental group showed less avoidance behavior of spiders (BAT), as well as lower anxiety of spiders (SPQ, FAS). Groups were not different in measures of depression or psychological distress. Interestingly, participants playing the Spider App reported higher anxiety, disgust and arousal ratings shortly after playing the app. However, anxiety, disgust, and arousal ratings decreased from day to day. We discuss our findings with respect to implications for the clinical practice.