We are a research and development lab that aims to establish the scientific foundations for effective mental health games. We empirically validate our games with rigorous research designs, we share our data publicly, and publish our results regardless of outcomes. We are also committed to developing a theoretical framework and new methodologies that stipulate how to use games to experimentally test theories of psychological change.
Our international partners include developmental psychologists, neuroscientists, veteran game developers, and artists whose objective is to harness the power of play to transform children's emotional lives. We co-design game experiences based on empirically validated principles, together with clinicians, parents and children themselves.
Welcome to the Games for Emotional and Mental Health (GEMH) Lab! We are committed to meeting young people in the digital playgrounds they have chosen to inhabit and providing choices that delight and empower youth while also training emotional resilience skills.
The iamYu app competes for the ZonMw Medical Inspirator award. Cast your vote here and contribute to personalized & collaborative youth care!
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We have written blogs about games to play online with family and friends or games that can help you relax. Both of which seem very needed in the uncertain times we live in now, most of us quarantined. However, we realized that not all families have access to these games. We wanted to do something for them. We have donated our Playstations that we have used for studies in the past to families who live in poverty. You can read more about that and the organisations that we donated them to in this blogpost.
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We compiled a huge list of online games you can play together; classic video games as well as online board games.
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VOTE NOW!! The iamYu app competes for the ZonMw Medical Inspirator award. Cast your vote here [insert url] and contribute to personalized & collaborative youth care!
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A long-lasting debate around game difficulty flared up again recently. Should games be inherently challenging? What can-or should-developers do to make their games more accessible? Does taking away the challenge hamstring a game’s ability to build resilience? My playthrough of Sayonara Wild Hearts provided me with the answers.
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A new paper by Hanneke Scholten and Isabela Granic is out, published by the Journal of Medical Internet Research! Find 'Use of the Principles of Design Thinking to Address Limitations of Digital Mental Health Interventions for Youth: Viewpoint' here or read about it here.
A meme is, simply put, an "idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture—often with the aim of conveying a particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning represented by the meme" (Wikipedia). Originally coined by famous biologist Richard Dawkins, memes are seen as the driving force behind culture, as vital to the development of culture as genes are vital to evolution. But are they really?
One of the coolest things about observing people when they play a game, especially when you get to observe them for an extended period of time, is witnessing the moment when someone becomes truly immersed in the game environment, when they truly connect with it, when something just 'clicks'...
A new Stanford study has uncovered the next puzzle piece about how our brains process what we see around us... using Pokémon! I think, however, that there is an additional, valuable thing to be learned from this study, which has also to do with how we view things, but in a way you might not expect.
If the goal of mental health interventions is not to reduce negative emotions but to encourage such qualities as openness, creativity, and internal locus of control, what would intervention tools look like?
In a small side street leading from the riverfront up to the city center a strange collection of people were gathered. Among them pre-teen children accompanied by a parent, a group of about a dozen teenage boys, several smaller groups of older teenagers and young adults, interspersed by older adults and senior citizens. All gathering to and playing together with the aim of battling and catching the legendary Pokémon Giratina. So why is it that Pokemon go still attracts so many players from all ages? And should your family join in?
People with large social networks on average live longer, happier, less stressed lives. We can potentially leverage video games and virtual spaces to increase the experience of social support and impact daily stress and anxiety. Therefore, this project aims to show that virtual social support can lower stress, and potentially impact stress coping behaviours.
Our research aims to transform young people’s mental health by developing and testing a social game for resiliency when facing stress events. Working in collaboration with the Award winning studio Aardman Animations, we want to harness the important mental health implications of both social support and mindsets, to develop a fun and engaging intervention.
Fast and accurate decision making in threatening situations is vital for police officers on duty. However, under threat, people tend to react impulsively and lack cognitive control. This is why police officers need to train control over their responses to threat as much as possible. To enable this, we develop a virtual training environment with real-time biofeedback. We combine virtual reality and biofeedback to create a personalized, realistic training experience, while honing state-of-the-art technology and psychophysical theory.
