342 Chapter 8 significance of games in our lives – games have the power to evoke positive emotions and foster social connections (McGonigal, 2011). Encouragingly, our systematic review showed the potential of casual games for improving mental health, indicating that casual games demonstrated effectiveness comparable to applied games and active conditions in the majority of studies. This prompts further investigation into their effectiveness and underlying mechanisms, and suggests that they may also be used in clinical practice (e.g., Silva et al., 2021). Casual games are easily accessible and scalable through mainstream media channels and game platforms. Previous research has also shown that youth already play casual games to relieve stress and feel more relaxed, and that they find the idea of casual games focussing on mental health interesting and appealing (R. Pine, Sutcliffe, et al., 2020), suggesting that casual games may be a viable option to explore as well. Finally, our findings support the notion that applied games can be effective for multiple mental health problems simultaneously, and that it is possible to target transdiagnostic mechanisms within applied and casual games. Our results in Chapter 4 demonstrated that MindLight, next to anxiety symptoms, has beneficial long-term effects on other mental health outcomes associated with anxiety symptoms (i.e., internalising problems, externalising problems, and self-efficacy). Furthermore, in our systematic review presented in Chapter 2, we identified several instances of applied games where effects were found in multiple mental health domains (e.g., on anxiety and depression, Knox et al., 2011; Merry, Stasiak, et al., 2012; Schuurmans, Nijhof, Popma, et al., 2021; and on both anxiety and externalising problems, Schuurmans et al., 2018). Also for casual games, we found promising results in a wide range of mental health domains, which may be attributed to their ability to counteract mechanisms defined as transdiagnostic, such as negative affect and rumination (Schaeuffele et al., 2021). A transdiagnostic prevention approach to anxiety and depression, or psychopathology in general (Fraire & Ollendick, 2013; Granic, 2014), may potentially result in a more significant benefit from prevention programs, including reduced overall treatment duration and cost-effectiveness, as well as facilitating the dissemination of evidence-based programs (Chu et al., 2015; Craske, 2012; Dozois et al., 2009; Weisz et al., 2014). Several reviews and meta-analyses have indeed shown the promise of transdiagnostic interventions (Schaeuffele et al., 2023; Schaeuffele et al., 2024). Another recent example from David and Fodor (2022) has been reported, in which they explicitly used a transdiagnostic framework to develop an applied game for emotional disorders in youth. To enhance the cost-effectiveness of games, which are
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