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Research Article: The REThink Online Therapeutic Game: A Usability Study

Date Published: 2023-07-25

Abstract:
Background: Children and adolescents’ help-seeking behaviors are often limited by fear, uncertainty, and stigma, as well as challenges with finding the right intervention, help, and a lack of familiarity with the process. A promising direction for the development of therapeutic interventions targeted at children is embedding them into gamified interventions, known as therapeutic or serious games. The aim of this paper is to describe the protocol of the beta REThink therapeutic game and to evaluate the usability of the game in a sample of children and adolescents. Methods: The study was delivered in schools, where 137 children and adolescents aged between 9 and 16 years old played the levels of the REThink game, followed by filling in the usability questionnaire. Findings: The results show above average evaluations for all levels of the game, for every dimension evaluated, namely presence/immersion, enjoyment, learning effectiveness, narratives, goal clarity, adequacy of learning material, and motivation. This study contributes to the literature on the usability of cognitive behavioral therapy-based therapeutic games for improvements in the emotion regulation abilities of children and adolescents, which can guide researchers interested in testing the REThink game in different protocols, as well to encourage its use by mental health specialists and parents.

Introduction:
Results of studies investigating children’s mental health reveal a concerning trend, indicating increased rates of mental illness and a higher prevalence of them. A meta-analysis conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic [1], indicates that the prevalence of anxiety and depression among children and adolescents was 29% and 26%. Additionally, 20.9% of adolescents aged 12–17 from the United States, evaluated between 2018 and 2019, reported ever having a major depressive episode, 36.7% reported persistent feelings of…

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