Manaaki - Gambling Help App

Manaaki is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy app for gambling

Have you been thinking of how you might stop gambling altogether or cut back on your gambling activities? A team at the National Institute for Health Innovation, University of Auckland, Deakin University, Australia and working with Hāpai te Hauora have created a free app called Manaaki.

Manaaki is based on current therapy used at health services called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT and builds on an e-learning programme called GAMBLINGLESS. Manaaki has embedded a range of strategies that are known to help people experiencing gambling problems or harms. Key features within Manaaki are;

• Personalising Manaaki to your needs

• Six modules that are about different stages of help from understanding your gambling to preventing lapses and being gamble harm free.

• Self-help tools and videos to help you practise

• A journal for you to note how you are going

• A forum where you can share your strategies and support others like you

• A webchat to a counsellor

Using a mobile app to help people wanting to change their gambling is very new and the team do not know if it will be effective or not. As such, Manaaki is currently being tested using a research design called a randomised trial. So what does this all mean? When you download Manaaki, you will be told more about the testing of Manaaki and asked to agree to help. When you accept, we will have some questions for you to answer which will help us be fair when we randomise you into Manaaki or the waiting group. At 4-, 8- and 12-weeks we will prompt you to answer a few questions about how things are for you. To acknowledge your help, we are giving you $60. This will be divided into $20 for each set of questions (4-,8- and 12-weeks).