8 331 GENERAL DISCUSSION (while playing the mental health game) and more competent (in either game) compared to their counterparts without severe symptoms. These results suggest that providing individuals with the choice to select a mental health game may be particularly important for individuals experiencing severe mental health symptoms. With regard to specific mental health symptoms, we found that participants with severe depressive symptoms exhibited lower levels of affect before gameplay, which increased during gameplay. This positive affect change was not observed in participants without elevated depressive symptoms, resulting in comparable positive affect levels post-gameplay for both groups. These results are in line with the mood-brightening effect in individuals experiencing depressive symptoms, indicating their heightened sensitivity to positive experiences and propensity to respond with more positive and less negative emotions (Bylsma et al., 2011; Peeters et al., 2003). Together our findings are promising, demonstrating that mental health messaging has no adverse effects on engagement and game experiences. In fact, it appears to have positive effects on youth with severe (depressive) symptoms, suggesting the potential to use mental health games for prolonged and continued gameplay over time. Finally, in Chapter 7 we also investigated whether mindsets change after playing a game promoted as mental health game. Irrespective of participants’ chosen game, there was no significant change observed in emotion mindset from pre- to post-test. Similarly, there was no overall change in stress mindset. However, among participants who opted for the mental health trailer, a notable change in their stress mindset after gameplay was observed. This suggested that these participants became slightly more neutral in their perceptions of the nature of stress, reflecting a decline in their belief that the effects of stress are inherently debilitating. It thus seems that the mental health messaging effectively functioned as a stress mindset intervention. These results are in line with previous research showing that mindsets can be changed through surprisingly brief interventions, such as reading an article, performing a short writing exercise or playing a virtual reality biofeedback game (e.g., Dweck, 2008; Jamieson et al., 2018; Maarsingh et al., 2019; Miu & Yeager, 2015; D. S. Yeager et al., 2014). Our results are particularly similar to research from Crum and colleagues (2013), who showed that watching short videoclips with messages about either the enhancing or debilitating effects of stress significantly changed participants’ stress mindset. Considering the established link between a stress-is-debilitating mindset and poorer mental health and well-being, further exploration into these findings is warranted (Crum et al., 2017; Keller et al., 2012; D. Park et al., 2018).
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