What on earth is psytainment? Well psytainment is a term which we coined here at BrightMind LABS just for fun. We were looking for a word which summed up what it is we are setting about making. We wanted something which encapsulated the genre of making mental health interventions in a truly gaming environment – and we bounced around all sorts of made up words before settling on psytainment.
Of course we are in the serious gaming genre – but where serious gaming is often very learning oriented, we needed to embrace immersive gaming more than many serious gaming ventures do. This is due to our target audience being kids aged five to 12 – who often have a very low attention span and would potentially not engage for long in a “serious game”.
So just for fun, here is how we define psytainment:
psy·tain·ment
Pronunciation: sī-tān-mənt
Definition:Therapeutic products that fuse cognitive behavioral therapy with immersive gaming principles to improve mental health.
Function: noun
Etymology: First coined by Fraser Hurrell and Dr Yvette Ahmad on 3 July 2008 in the published public disclosure appended to the BrightMind LABS University of Auckland Spark Venture Summary.
"MyFriendQuest uses techniques backed my credible research to help kids learn the skills to make friends and fit in socially.