2 35 REVIEW OF APPLIED & CASUAL GAMES FOR MENTAL HEALTH 2014), and/or they did not include multi-modal interventions (e.g., David et al., 2020) and/or positive outcomes such as happiness and relaxation. For a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of games on mental health outcomes, the effectiveness of applied and casual games should be examined simultaneously, across mental health domains, and for both clinical and healthy populations. The aim of the current review was to provide an overview of randomised controlled studies that have assessed digital games for improving mental health in children, adolescents and young adults and to examine the effectiveness of both applied and casual games. Mental health was defined as including internalising, externalising, neurodevelopmental, psychotic or personalityrelated outcomes, symptoms or disorders. Specifically, we examined the range of mental health issues that were targeted, specified the populations (clinical or healthy population), and linked this information to the types of games (applied and casual) that were used, and their subsequent effectiveness. In addition, we set out to explore how this type of research is conducted by examining methodological characteristics such as the specific design, type of control group(s), use of ‘multi-modal interventions’ (i.e., using a digital game in addition to other therapy components), the frequency and duration of sessions, whether nonspecific factors had been taken into account, as well as risk of bias in the individual studies. METHODS We followed the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) in conducting the search and writing up the results (Page, McKenzie et al., 2021; Page, Moher et al., 2021). The protocol for the current systematic review was not pre-registered. Information Sources and Search To identify relevant studies, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Pubmed were searched on October 21, 2020 (updated searches were run on October 29, 2021 and July 22, 2023), using keywords related to games and a randomised controlled trial (RCT) design. In general, the search string was: (applied game* OR applied video game* OR applied videogame* OR serious game* OR serious video game* OR serious videogame* OR game* OR video game* OR videogame*) AND (randomi*ed control* trial OR rct). No restrictions were made with regard to the publication date of possible articles and the full
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