Serious games for the therapy of the posttraumatic stress disorder of children and adolescents

Abstract

The posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental-health problem that can emerge after a delayed reaction of a person to a traumatic incident. A common therapy is the so-called exposure therapy. However, children and adolescent cannot be treated with a common therapy. In this paper we describe a serious game for the therapy of a PTSD by children and adolescent. Objective of this paper is to introduce a concept for the game development and a method to balance the game. It is based on a so-called impulse hierarchy. The game prototype respectively the utilized concept and methods have been tested with healthy test persons. The results are a strong indication for the effective of the developed game concept and the usefulness of the key principles. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.