The Pesky gNATs Game

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Imagine you are 9-17 years of age and experiencing clinical anxiety or low mood. You go to a mental health clinic and your therapist offers to help by playing a computer game with you week by week...



The Pesky gNATs computer game software is designed for use by mental health professionals who work with young people with anxiety or low mood. Pesky gNATs is available to appropriately qualified mental health professionals.


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​The Computer Game

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​The Pesky gNATs computer game helps to support the delivery of a child friendly CBT intervention. It is designed for use in sessions where a young person plays the game along-side a mental health professional.


In the game young people visit a 3-D world called “gNAT’s Island” and meet a team of wild-life explorers. Each member of this team introduces a single CBT concept. These concepts are illustrated through conversation, embedded animations, videos and questions, using examples from a young person called Shona who has also experienced difficulties with anxiety and low mood and played the game before.


​The game has seven levels. Each level is designed to be the equivalent of a standard treatment session and supports a single component of a customised, developmentally appropriate CBT intervention. With the help of their therapist the young person applies the CBT concept they learn in each level to their current difficulties. Each level also has the option to learn a mindfulness or relaxation skill.


In the game an unfolding concrete metaphor is used to make CBT concepts accessible to children. ‘Negative Automatic Thoughts’ are presented as little creatures called ‘gNATs’ that can sting people. ‘Cognitive monitoring’ becomes gNAT trapping, ‘cognitive restructuring’ becomes gNAT swatting, ‘Core Beliefs’ are discovered through hunting gNATs back to their Hives. Relapse prevention takes place at a future-world cinema.