Robert J. Wierzbicki will present a paper “Digital Therapies” at the International Conference on Entertainment Computing (IFIP-ICEC’18), Poznan, Poland, September, 17-20th, 2018.
Today, digital transformation and virtualization processes profoundly affect societies; not only in terms of socio-economic disruption, but also in terms of rising mental health problems. This paper focuses on the design aspects and the use of “nurture games” as a social utility of preventive measures (that is referred to in this paper as “Digital Therapies”), in the realm of nur-turing and public school education, supporting therapeutic benefit and well-being. The Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), employed for treating a large number of mental problems, is considered here as a fundamental psychotherapeutic approach, which needs to underpin the design of games aiming to improve mental health and support the prevention of challenging be-haviors in youth.