The NICE-recommended immersive game, called Lumi Nova, combines a gold-standard therapeutic approach - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - with ethical and immersive gaming delivered via a mobile app.
It has been co-designed by social enterprise BFB Labs along with children, parents, NHS clinicians, educators and mental health experts. It acts as a first-line treatment option to support anxiety in children before interventions like therapy are considered or while they wait for other support, bridging the gap in mental healthcare provision for children with mild to moderate anxiety and improving access to inclusive and timely care.
Families in Herefordshire and Worcestershire can access the intervention without the need for a prescription or referral via Lumi Nova's digital self-referral hub. There is no limit to the number of children who can access the intervention, nor how many times or for how long they can access the support.
Lumi Nova gives children instant access to an age-appropriate therapeutic mobile game to self-manage their worries and build lifelong mental resilience. The intervention takes children through a series of personalised quests - such as imagining and drawing themselves in particular scenarios or watching immersive videos where their worry plays out in real time - to gradually expose them to the fears and anxieties they face and give them the tools to overcome them.
Since the beginning of 2023, more than 7,000 children and their families have accessed Lumi Nova in more than 20 areas across the UK. The service is also available in Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Devon, Bedford, Central Bedfordshire, Luton, Wakefield, Sunderland and Edinburgh.
In a published pilot study, research showed a significant improvement in child and parent-reported outcome measures after using Lumi Nova.
The app is also improving access to care and outcomes for children from ethnic minority backgrounds. Improvements in outcome scores for ethnic minority children are approximately 30% higher than that of the average Lumi Nova user.
Sonja Upton, associate director for children, young people and families and specialist primary care at Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, said: ‘Lumi Nova helps us to meet the growing demand for emotional, mental health support which we have seen since Covid-19. It provides inclusive, timely support for young people at an early age living in Herefordshire and Worcestershire and it can be accessed for free, on-demand, anytime, anywhere.
‘By introducing Lumi Nova as one way for young people to better understand how they are feeling and practise ways of managing their worries, we can offer an early intervention that could prevent issues from escalating.'
The Lumi Nova app, which is available on Android and iOS, has also recently gone live in Lincolnshire.
