Established Psychology That Really Works!
Of course, Paradise Island doesn’t ask you to do just any old real life activity for rewards. We use a streamlined version of the well-established and highly successful therapy known as Behavioral Activation. It’s basically the “secret sauce” of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and it’s designed to pull people out of an anhedonic depressive spiral. Normally, people with anhedonia are prevented from accurately predicting whether meaningful activities will make them feel better, so they end up lying in bed doing nothing and thus feeling worse and worse. And that’s where we come in: Paradise Island gives players the push they need to get up and break the spiral.
Essentially, Paradise Island prompts players to get up and do something that’s meaningful to them in order to get in-game rewards. Then, once they do that activity, they’re prompted to reflect on how it made them feel, to help them realize that it did, in fact, make them feel better, despite what their anhedonia made them believe. This helps players break out of anhedonic spirals, and it helps teach skills that can prevent future depressive episodes!
Paradise Island comes with 75 suggested activities, hand-picked by top therapists and psychology experts, or users can also choose their own custom activities if they prefer. We’re here to provide the motivation to get up, prevent or break out of depressive loops, and start feeling better!