Analysis of the Usefulness of a Serious Game to Raise Awareness about Mental Health Problems in a Sample of High School and University Students: Relationship with Familiarity and Time Spent Playing Video Games
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Background: One of the main challenges in the field of mental health today is the stigma towards individuals who have psychological disorders. Aims: This study aims to analyse the usefulness of applying a serious game developed for the purpose of raising awareness among students about mental health problems and analyse whether its usefulness can be influenced by the type of video games or the time that students usually devote to playing with this type of entertainment. Method: The serious game introduces four characters who display the symptoms of different psychological disorders. A total of 530 students participated in the study, 412 of whom comprised the experimental group and 118 the control group, 291 came from secondary school classes and 239 were university students. Results: The findings show that this serious game significantly reduced total stigma among students. Variables like time habitually spent playing video games or video game preference had no bearing on the results. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the serious game is an appropriated tool to reduce stigma, both in high school and university students, independently of the type of video games that young people usually play, or time spent playing video games.
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Three included studies showed high risk of bias in blinding of participants and blinding of outcome assessment.
“However, 3 studies [31,32,37] showed a high ROB in the blinding of the participants and blinding of outcome assessment.”
From Innovative Technology–Based Interventions to Reduce Stigma Toward People With Mental Illness: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (2022) · cites this paper as [37]
Two included studies presented incomplete data.
“Regarding data, 2 studies [22,37] presented incomplete data.”
From Innovative Technology–Based Interventions to Reduce Stigma Toward People With Mental Illness: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (2022) · cites this paper as [37]
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- Authors
- Cangas, A., Navarro, N., Aguilar-Parra, J., Trigueros, R., Gallego, J., Zárate, R., & Gregg, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Almería (ES)
- Department of Psychology, Hum-760 Research Team, Health Research Centre, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- The University of Winnipeg (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Cangas, Adolfo
- Aguilar-Parra, José
- Trigueros, Rubén
- Venue
- Journal of Clinical Medicine
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2019-09-20
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 1504
- ISSN
- 2077-0383 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6832220
- OpenAlex
- W2974435949
- Cited by
- 30
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 5.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Clinical Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Repositorio de Patentes de la Universidad de Almería (Universidad de Almería) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga (University of Málaga) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PSI2017-84961-R AEI/FEDER, UE)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Keywords
- serious games, mental health awareness, stigma reduction, mental health stigma, mental illness, video game preferences, high school students, university students, game-based learning
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