I am a Postdoctoral researcher passionate about internalizing psychopathology prevention and the use of technology and innovation for this purpose while stimulating intrinsic motivation. I love to read, cook and bake everything delicious. Working on finishing my dissertation and Two Dots (Level 3682 and counting).
Stars can’t shine without darkness
Having recently defended my dissertation entitled Engaging Youth in Depression Prevention: Testing the Effectiveness and Appeal of Applied and Commercial Video Games, I am now looking for my next research adventure. I am a behavioural scientist passionate about internalizing psychopathology intervention, intrinsic motivation, and the use of video games and other technological advancements for this purpose. As a PhD-student and Postdoctoral researcher my projects focused on mechanisms in commercial and applied video games that may promote mental health in adolescents. Having experienced first-hand the limitations of using symptom questionnaires to select youth for prevention programs, I believe that innovative theoretical, methodological and intervention research is needed to lower the disease burden of internalizing mental health disorders and I am excited to contribute to this with my own work.
Commercial video games may offer a cheap and readily available way to help us understand in what way video games can be used to promote adolescent well-being. Excellent targets for this are games that involve social interaction, encourage both positive and negative emotions and are identified by youth themselves as potentially beneficial. By letting youth play several commercial video games in different settings, we can learn how games interact with well-being and motivation in both short and long-term.
More and more games are designed to promote mental health. If these games are found to be effective, it is important to investigate which factors are responsible for the improvements in mental health. Most often, this type of research focuses on the specific clinical techniques that were designed into the game. However, from the clinical literature it is known that, for instance, expectations, motivation, and one’s mindset about the malleability of symptoms play a major role in positive intervention outcomes. In my project I aim to investigate these nonspecific factors and examine how we can manipulate these factors in order to optimize video games for mental health.
M. Poppelaars (2021). Engaging youth in depression prevention: Testing the effectiveness and appeal of applied and commercial video games. Doctoral Thesis. Radboud University.
Author: Marlou Poppelaars
Upload date: 11-26-2021
Poppelaars, M., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., Otten, R., & Granic, I. (2021). Can a commercial video game prevent depression? Null results and whole sample action mechanisms in a randomized controlled trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 575962. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575962
Author: Marlou Poppelaars
Upload date: 01-12-2021
Wols, A., Poppelaars, M., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., & Granic, I. (2020). Entertainment Computing, 100371.
Author: Aniek Wols
Upload date: 07-07-2020
Poppelaars, M., Wols, A., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., & Granic, I. (2018). Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01837
Author: Marlou Poppelaars
Upload date: 09-10-2018
Poppelaars, M., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., Kleinjan, M., & Granic, I. (2018). The impact of explicit mental health messages in video games on players’ motivation and affect. Computers in Human Behavior, 83, 16-23. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.01.019
Author: Marlou Poppelaars
Upload date: 07-01-2018
Poppelaars, M., Tak, Y. R., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., Engels, R. C. M. E., Lobel, A., Merry, S. N., Lucassen, M. F. G., & Granic, I. (2016). Behaviour Research and Therapy, 80, 33-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2016.03.005
Author: Marlou Poppelaars
Upload date: 05-01-2016
Granic, I., Lobel, A., Poppelaars, M., & Engels, R. C. M. E. (2015). Kind en Adolescent, 36 (1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12453-014-0066-8
Author: Marlou Poppelaars
Upload date: 01-22-2015
Poppelaars, M., Tak, Y. R., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., Engels, R. C. M. E., Lobel, A., Merry, S. N., Lucassen, M. F. G., & Granic, I. (2014). In Schouten, B., Fedtke, S., Schijven, M., Vosmeer, M. & Gekker, A. (Eds.), Games for Health 2014 (pp. 125-135). Germany: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-07141-7_17
Author: Marlou Poppelaars
Upload date: 10-29-2014
Developmental Psychopathology Depression Anxiety Prevention Applied Video Games
Author: Marlou Poppelaars
Upload date: 06-09-2020
Wols, A., Pingel, M., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., & Granic, I. (2024). Effectiveness of applied and casual games for young people's mental health: A systematic review of randomised controlled studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 102396.
Author: Aniek Wols
Upload date: 01-30-2024
Wols, A., Hollenstein, T., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., & Granic (2021). Games for Health, 10(4), 207-219.
Author: Aniek Wols
Upload date: 08-09-2021