What is SPARX?

SPARX is a self-help computer program for young people with symptoms of depression. The program has been developed by a team of specialists in treating adolescent depression from The University of Auckland. The project was led by Associate Professor Sally Merry. Metia Interactive designed the software. Funding for the development and evaluation of SPARX was provided by the New Zealand Ministry of Health. The SPARX trial results have been published in the British Medical Journal. For more about what SPARX is click here.

Does SPARX work?

SPARX has been extensively evaluated and the results from the studies have been peer-reviewed, presented at national and international conferences and published in scientific journals, including the British Medical Journal.

UN and UNESCO awards for SPARX

SPARX has just won an international digital award from UNESCO’s Netexplo, a ‘global observatory on digital society’. The prestigious Netexplo Awards will be made to 10 recipient projects in Paris on 15 February 2013 during the Netexplo Forum, attended by 1300 people from 30 countries. The awards were presented for projects that Netexplo call “the ten most innovative and promising digital initiatives of the year”. Click here to view the short UNESCO video-clip on SPARX.

SPARX also won a World Summit (UN) Award 2011 in the category of e-Health and Environment. The World Summit Awards honour excellence in multimedia and e-Content creation. Forty winners (five in each category) are selected from 100 countries.

SPARX is not currently available for distribution. We are working on ways to make SPARX available for general release. We are hoping to do this in 2013, but SPARX’s release will be funding dependent. Please check this website for updates. Thank you for your interest.