Abstract
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.
Highlights
One of the most important problems among young people today is the lack of knowledge about mental health issues
A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was carried out to evaluate the influence that education level and gender had on the benefits of the intervention
After applying Stigma Stop to a sample consisting of both high school and university students, it was confirmed, as in previous studies [15,16], that the serious game helped to reduce stigma in the total sample, this reduction did not occur in the control group
Summary
One of the most important problems among young people today is the lack of knowledge about mental health issues. The World Health Organization [1] estimates that 10–20% of the world’s teenagers are at risk of developing various psychological disorders For this reason, it is of utmost importance to promote good health to prevent and mitigate the effects of such illnesses. There is a great deal of doubt and confusion among students themselves regarding the truth about psychological disorders and what they can do to respond to them [3] These issues are closely related to the social stigma that currently exists towards mental health disorders. 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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