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‘Make mental health & well-being for all a global priority’ is this year’s World Mental Health Day’s (October 10^th) main message. While the pandemic has, and continues to, take a toll on our mental health, it is of even greater importance to recognize this day and to seek any opportunity to re-kindle our efforts to protect and improve mental health.

Jason Dellatolla, 2^nd year PhD Candidate in the Healthy Living Lab under the supervision of Dr. Lindsay Duncan, says that recognizing World Mental Health Day ‘helps reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness’. As a 2019 survey showed that working Canadians are nearly 3 times less likely to want to disclose a mental illness than a physical one, Jason urges that ‘the stigma is real, and it endures’.

Jason’s PhD research focuses on developing an educational videogame that teaches depression-management skills, with the goal of being an interventional strategy that is developed by and for adults with depression. While there are numerous barriers to mental healthcare, including high costs of treatment, difficulty recognizing symptoms, and low help-seeking behaviours, all of which can lead to suicidal ideology, he emphasizes that ‘developing accessible and engaging tools that teach depression-management skills is not only scientifically-valuable, but can be life-saving’.

He offers an insight into why this research topic is so important to him: ‘As someone who has been navigating depression for over a decade, I know what it’s like to feel the darkness creeping in, to have it overshadow everything you (want to) do. It’s lonely and exhausting’. Jason believes that his lived experiences will help shape his videogame so that it resonates with and has an impact on those experiencing depression.

Jason states that upon completion of his PhD, he aims to have a fully functioning educational videogame available to download free-of-cost on mobile devices, to help people ‘wherever they are and whenever they are in need’.