Serious games in mental health treatment: Review of literature

Serious games are considered as powerful tools in learning and instructional purposes. Besides, serious games also have gained-their own popularity among children and adolescents. In these recent years, psychotherapists have realized the advantages of using games as the assistive tool in psychotherapy, so called therapeutic games. The use of serious games is already being applied in various types of mental illnesses, such as anxiety, depression, phobia,panic disorder, and eating disorder.This position paper describes the effectiveness of serious games in treating various mental illnesses among young patients.A systematic review points out the development and research in the circle of serious games for mental illnesses focusing on young patients.In this paper, the literature review consists of relevant serious games for therapeutic development since the year 2005