Using interactive storytelling to improve mental health outcomes

UCLA School of Nursing Professor MarySue Heilemann, PhD, RN, FAAN, is leading a randomized trial to test a novel interactive storytelling app designed to connect Latina women to mental health care. 

The 5-year study, ‘Randomized controlled trial of a choice-driven, interactive, storytelling web-based app to investigate mental health treatment initiation among symptomatic Latinas’, is being funded through a National Institutes of Mental Health R01 grant. 

“We are excited to take our web-based app using transmedia to the next level of testing, so we can connect symptomatic Latinas to needed mental health care in a way that is compelling, desirable, and discreet, with less fear or stigma,” said Heilemann. “This grant brings an unprecedented opportunity to test the web-based app with a large sample of Latinas over a 9-month period, so we know if evidence-informed story-based approaches are superior to information-only media.”

According to the research team, the app, Catalina: Confronting my Emotions, shares story-based, character-driven videos featuring a Latina lead character in a fictional episode based on themes that matter to Latinas struggling with untreated depression or anxiety. Results from the study will help establish state-of-the-art methodology for responsibly and collaboratively using input from a target group, such as Latinas, to create interactive features for interventions.