MindLight: A Video Game Intervention to Reduce Children's Anxiety

Summary

Anxiety is the most prevalent form of children's mental health problems and demand far exceeds treatment availability. Even when children do have access to care, evidence-based treatments such as cognitive-behavioural therapy have several limitations: they are largely didactic, leaving children unmotivated and disengaged; children get little practice in using the skills they are taught, creating a large gap between their knowledge and their everyday behaviour and therapy is costly, often prohibitive for the children that most need it. Therapeutic video games can address each of these gaps: they are engaging contexts through which children practice skills (rather than memorize lessons), and they cost substantially less than conventional approaches. The proposed research will test the effectiveness of MindLight, an innovative video game that targets childhood anxiety problems. MindLight incorporates several evidence-based strategies including relaxation and exposure techniques, attention bias modification methods, and neurofeedback mechanics that together produce an immersive game world through which children learn to manage and overcome anxiety symptoms. Two randomized controlled studies with 8-16 year old children are proposed to test the effectiveness of MindLight in reducing anxiety: the first is a prevention study aimed at children at risk for developing serious anxiety problems and the second is a clinical trial aimed at decreasing symptoms in anxiety-disordered children. Children randomly assigned to the intervention group will play MindLight for 5 hours over 2-3 weeks; control participants in the prevention sample will play a commercial video game with a similar theme for the same amount of time whereas control participants in the clinical sample will use an online cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) program. Both studies will assess children's anxiety levels before the intervention, just after, and at a 3-month follow-up. Moderators (e.g., comorbidities) and mediators (e.g., attention biases) will be assessed to identify potential mechanisms of change associated with successful intervention effects.

Conditions

• Anxiety

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

MindLight

MindLight is a video game that uses neurofeedback as part of game mechanics. Participants play for 5 hours total over 3 weeks. Measures taken pre, post, and 3-month follow-up.

BEHAVIORAL

Online CBT

Five sessions of power point slides that cover primary concepts and homework of cognitive behavioral therapy. Adapted for children. Measures taken pre, post, and 3-month follow-up.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Ontario Mental Health Foundation

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• Queen's University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Tom Hollenstein, PhD · Queen's University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

8 Years

Max Age

16 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-12-31

Primary Completion

2016-06-30

Completion

2016-06-30

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations