The central treatment component “LUCEO-Anxiety” is intended to prepare or deepen exposure therapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders in outpatient child and adolescent psychotherapy. It is suitable for children between the ages of 7 and 12 who have received a diagnosis or a suspected diagnosis from the spectrum of anxiety disorders (especially social anxiety, separation anxiety, generalized anxiety).

The building block is based on established methods of cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders: psychoeducation, cognitive restructuring and exposure. The children therefore first acquire psychoeducational knowledge and cognitive strategies to reduce anxiety-inducing thoughts. They are then motivated to carry out confrontation exercises in the virtual environment (e.g. imagination exercises) and in their everyday lives.

All learning units and the therapeutic techniques included in them are integrated into a child-friendly, gamified format, which is intended to motivate children to continuously and repeatedly engage with the therapy content.

The second component “Circus Empathico” has already been developed and evaluated as a digital learning game Circus Empathico for children on the autism spectrum to promote social skills (Kirst et al., 2015, Zoerner et al., 2016, Kirst et al., 2022; Naumann et al., 2023). Since social competence is an important predictor of mental health in a variety of disorders, it is an important transdiagnostic component of cognitive behavioral therapy. Accordingly, Circus Empathico in DIVAN KIDS should also be used with socially anxious children in order to playfully promote socio-emotional skills.