4 205 MENTAL HEALTH OUTCOMES OF APPLIED GAME MINDLIGHT Procedure The study was designed as a randomised, multicenter non-inferiority study with two parallel intervention arms: MindLight and CBT. Between January and September 2015, all children with active parental consent in grades 3–6 from eight primary schools in the southeast part of the Netherlands (N = 791) were first screened on anxiety symptoms with the child version of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS; Spence, 1998). Screening took place in the classroom during school hours in the presence of one or two members of the research team. Parent reports were not included in the screening for practical reasons, but also because self-report questionnaires for anxiety are considered more reliable than parent reports (Hourigan et al., 2011; Lagattuta et al., 2012; Lahikainen et al., 2006). Children were eligible if either at least two SCAS subscales (excluding the obsessive compulsive disorder subscale) or the total SCAS score, was 1 SD or more above the mean found in a large normative sample (Muris et al., 2000a). Parents of the 221 (27.9%) eligible children were contacted by phone to assess exclusion criteria and invite them and their child(ren) to participate. Children were excluded if they already received anxiety treatment or if they were diagnosed with either obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder or autism spectrum disorder. These children were excluded because obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder are no longer considered an anxiety disorder in the DSM-V, and children with these disorders (including autism spectrum disorder) may benefit from a more specific or specialized treatment than the prevention programs in the current study (e.g., Barrett et al., 2008; Nauta & Scholing 2007). Parents of 174 (78.7%) children gave initial verbal consent; written informed consent was obtained from parents at pre-test, a week prior to the intervention. Children and their mothers then filled out the questionnaires at school or online respectively (i.e., pre-test). Next, children were randomised within school and younger/older age groups, and stratified by sex and grade to participate in the MindLight or CBT group (further details of the randomisation procedure are available elsewhere; see Schoneveld et al., 2018). Children and mothers were assessed again at completion of the intervention (post-test), and 3- and 6-months post-intervention completion (i.e., 3- and 6-months follow-up). MindLight MindLight is a 3D third-person neurofeedback video game designed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the PlayNice Institute and game designers from GainPlay Studio. The game starts with a little boy named Arty who is left at the doorstep of his grandmother’s scary mansion. In his
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