Pesky gNATs: Using Games to Support Mental Health Interventions for Adolescents

This position paper gives a brief overview of a long- term and ongoing series of projects focused on the design and evaluation of computer games that can support mental health interventions with young adolescents. The work has its origins in a HCI project, but has evolved into a long-term interdisciplinary collaboration involving game designers, computer scientists and clinical psychologists, amongst others. It has resulted in a series of computer games and mobile apps that support a range of interventions including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for depression and anxiety, mindfulness-based CBT, an extended intervention CBT for adolescents experiencing trauma, and a CBT intervention for adults with intellectual disabilities. The games and mobile apps have been widely distributed and have been evaluated through randomised controlled trials in clinical settings. Here we briefly describe each game; the overall design process, motivation, and theoretical background; the results of key evaluations; some of our core lessons.