2 33 REVIEW OF APPLIED & CASUAL GAMES FOR MENTAL HEALTH et al., 2018; Granic et al., 2014; Steadman et al., 2014). Casual games are built for player enjoyment and recreational purposes (Deterding, 2015; Fullerton, 2014), with no consideration of their therapeutic potential. While casual games are not explicitly designed to improve mental health, players may feel better after playing them and skills that may relate to improved mental health can also be learned (Ferguson & Olson, 2013; Olson, 2010; R. Pine, Sutcliffe, et al., 2020). Casual games can also trigger positive emotions (McGonigal, 2011; Osmanovic & Pecchioni, 2016; Ryan et al., 2006) which, in turn, aid individuals in expanding their momentary thought-action repertoires and personal resources (Fredrickson, 2001; Quinn et al., 2012). There may also be benefits from games that trigger intense (negative) emotions, which may allow the player to practice coping strategies in a safe environment (Granic et al., 2014). In addition, playing casual games may provide distraction from problems and worries, showing beneficial effects on mood (Bowman & Tamborini, 2012). Finally, casual games may evoke the experience of flow, intrinsic motivation and basic need satisfaction, which have been linked to mental health benefits as well (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009; Ryan et al., 2008; Ryan et al., 2006; Sherry, 2004). Indeed, there is growing evidence for the potential of a wide range of casual games to improve emotion regulation (Villani et al., 2018) and alleviate mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and stress (Kowal et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2021; Li et al., 2016; Pallavicini et al., 2021), posttraumatic stress symptoms (Holmes et al., 2009; E. L. James et al., 2015), autism (Fang et al., 2019; Lima et al., 2020), and schizophrenia (Suenderhauf et al., 2016). Nonspecific Effects in Games As outlined earlier, applied games are developed to train or promote behaviour change. Specific therapeutic techniques are designed as training elements in these games and these techniques are assumed to be responsible for improvements in mental health outcomes, though these links are rarely investigated explicitly (for an exception, see Wols et al., 2018). At the same time, casual games do not incorporate any therapeutic techniques in particular, and yet playing casual games may have mental health benefits. These findings suggest that factors other than the incorporated therapeutic techniques may contribute to improvements in mental health. In the clinical literature, positive intervention outcomes are, in part, explained by nonspecific factors. These are elements that are not specific to any psychotherapeutic school but nevertheless contribute to mental health improvements (e.g. Grencavage & Norcross, 1990; Ilardi & Craighead, 1994).
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