TL;DR
Board games are increasingly recognised as a legitimate therapeutic tool. The combination of structured social interaction, shared goals, manageable failure, and post-game reflection creates conditions well-suited to developing emotional resilience, social skills, and communication. This guide covers the evidence base and the specific games used in clinical, educational, and home therapeutic settings.
When a child therapist brings a board game into a session, it's not because they couldn't think of something better to do. It's because the game creates conditions that are remarkably difficult to achieve through conversation alone.
A board game session involves structured interaction, shared focus, manageable stakes, natural turn-taking, and recovery from setbacks — all embedded in an activity that feels like play rather than therapy. Research from the UK and US consistently shows these conditions are powerful for developing social and emotional skills in children and young people, and increasingly in adults.
This guide covers the evidence behind therapeutic board gaming and the games most commonly used in clinical, educational, and home settings.
The Evidence: Why Board Games Work Therapeutically
Social skill development — A 2021 meta-analysis in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry examined structured play interventions across 47 studies. Board games were among the most effective structured play formats for developing turn-taking, emotional regulation, and conflict resolution skills in children with social difficulties.
Anxiety and stress reduction — Board games create what psychologists call "optimal challenge" — tasks that are demanding enough to be engaging but achievable enough to prevent overwhelming distress. This state is associated with reduced cortisol levels and improved affect in both children and adults (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008).
Cognitive rehabilitation — Several UK NHS trusts use board games in occupational therapy settings to support cognitive rehabilitation following brain injury, stroke, and depression. The combination of rule-following, planning, and social interaction targets multiple cognitive domains simultaneously.
Resilience building — Games create a safe environment for experiencing and recovering from failure. Every game lost is a failure with limited real-world consequences, teaching the basic resilience skill: setbacks are temporary and recoverable.
Communication and language — For children with speech and language difficulties, board games provide a natural context for practising communication without the social pressure of unstructured conversation.
Types of Therapeutic Board Games
Purpose-Built Therapeutic Games
These are games designed explicitly for therapeutic use, often used by trained practitioners in clinical or educational settings:
The Talking, Feeling, and Doing Game
Developed by Richard Gardner, this is one of the most widely used therapeutic games in clinical child psychology. Cards prompt children to respond to situations with reflections on their thoughts, feelings, and actions — building emotional vocabulary and self-awareness in a non-threatening format.
Used in: Child therapy, school counselling
Best for: Ages 6–12, emotional vocabulary development
Social Skills Game
A structured game specifically addressing social interaction rules — making eye contact, taking turns in conversation, responding to others' emotions. Used in ADHD, autism spectrum, and social anxiety contexts.
Used in: CAMHS settings, educational support
Best for: Children with social development challenges
The Ungame
A non-competitive board game where players respond to question cards designed to encourage self-disclosure and communication. No winning or losing — the focus is on conversation. Used with families in family therapy and group work.
Used in: Family therapy, group communication work
Best for: All ages, communication building
Mainstream Games with Therapeutic Applications
Not all effective therapeutic games were designed for that purpose. Many standard board games are used by practitioners because their mechanics naturally create therapeutic conditions:
Smoothie Wars
Used in school settings and youth work programmes for its combination of competitive strategy, economic reasoning, and resilience-building. The game's design — players experience setbacks (competitors undercut their prices, they miscalculate stock) but the game continues and recovery is always possible — models a healthy relationship with failure.
Practitioners working with young people in business and enterprise programmes report that Smoothie Wars creates a context for discussing decision-making under pressure, managing the emotional response to setbacks, and thinking strategically about problems — all transferable skills in therapeutic contexts.
The game is also used in residential settings for young people because it requires sustained social engagement — negotiation, prediction of others' behaviour, emotional regulation when losing — without the intensity of direct therapeutic conversation.
"Smoothie Wars gets young people talking in ways that conversation alone never does. They're negotiating, competing, handling disappointment — and then you debrief what just happened. The insight is remarkable." — Youth worker, Surrey, 2024
Therapeutic applications: Resilience, emotional regulation, social engagement
Best for: Ages 10+, youth work, enterprise education
Pandemic (Cooperative)
Pandemic is widely used in therapeutic and educational settings for its cooperative structure. The game places players under shared pressure to solve a problem together, requiring communication, delegation, collective decision-making, and shared resilience when things go wrong. Practitioners working with groups around communication and teamwork find it a reliable tool.
Therapeutic applications: Communication, teamwork, shared problem-solving
Best for: Ages 10+, group therapy or team-building contexts
Jenga
Though simple, Jenga is used in therapeutic settings specifically for anxiety work — the physical tension of carefully removing blocks under risk of collapse is a concrete analogue to anxiety management. Used in CBT-informed practice with young people.
Therapeutic applications: Anxiety management, impulse control
Best for: Ages 6+, individual or group anxiety work
Chess
Long established in cognitive and therapeutic settings. Chess is used in ADHD interventions (requiring sustained attention and inhibitory control), school programmes for emotional regulation, and with older adults for cognitive maintenance. The evidence base for chess as a cognitive intervention is extensive.
Therapeutic applications: Attention, planning, emotional regulation, cognitive maintenance
Best for: Ages 8+ through late adulthood
Using Board Games Therapeutically at Home
Parents and carers can create genuine therapeutic benefit through board games without formal training by following a few principles:
Choose games with manageable failure — games where setbacks are part of the mechanics and recovery is possible. Smoothie Wars, Pandemic, and Ticket to Ride all model this. Avoid games that eliminate players early.
Play without excessive pressure on winning — the therapeutic value comes from the process, not the outcome. If winning becomes the only thing that matters, the reflective space disappears.
Build in post-game conversation — brief, casual reflection after a game session extracts significant value: "What was the hardest decision you had to make?" or "How did you feel when [X] happened?" These conversations build emotional literacy without feeling clinical.
Use cooperative games for families in conflict — when a family relationship has tension, competitive games can exacerbate it. Cooperative games like Pandemic place everyone on the same side, creating shared experience of difficulty and success.
Introduce games that develop specific skills — if a child struggles with impulse control, games requiring careful, deliberate decision-making (chess, Hive, Patchwork) are more useful than fast-reflex games.
Therapeutic Games by Use Case
| Goal | Best Game | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Emotional vocabulary | The Talking, Feeling, and Doing Game | Clinical/school |
| Social skills, turn-taking | Social Skills Game / Smoothie Wars | Clinical/home |
| Resilience and setback recovery | Smoothie Wars / Pandemic | Home/youth work |
| Communication in families | The Ungame / Codenames | Family therapy/home |
| Cognitive engagement (adults) | Chess / Azul | Occupational therapy |
| Anxiety management | Jenga | Clinical/home |
| Teamwork and cooperation | Pandemic / Forbidden Island | Group settings |
FAQs: Therapeutic Board Games
Q: What board games are used in therapy? The most commonly used are The Talking, Feeling, and Doing Game, The Ungame, and Social Skills Game for purpose-built therapeutic applications. In broader therapeutic and educational settings, Pandemic (cooperative), Smoothie Wars (resilience and social engagement), Chess, and Jenga are widely used.
Q: Are board games good for mental health? Yes — research consistently supports structured game play as beneficial for emotional wellbeing, social skill development, stress reduction, and cognitive engagement. The structured, time-limited nature of board games creates conditions for therapeutic benefit without the intensity of direct clinical intervention.
Q: What games help with social skills? Games requiring sustained social engagement — turn-taking, reading others, negotiation — are the most directly relevant. Smoothie Wars, Codenames, Catan, and the purpose-built Social Skills Game are all used in this context.
Q: Can board games help with anxiety? Games that create controlled challenge — Jenga, chess, and Patchwork — are used in anxiety work because they provide a manageable form of tension and practise in tolerating uncertainty. Cooperative games can also reduce anxiety by providing social connection and shared purpose.
Q: What is the best board game for children's emotional development? For structured therapeutic contexts, The Talking, Feeling, and Doing Game. For home settings, Smoothie Wars (ages 10+) and Pandemic (ages 10+) both create natural contexts for resilience, social engagement, and emotional regulation. For younger children, cooperative games like Forbidden Island are useful from age seven or eight.
Final Thought
Board games occupy a unique therapeutic space: they feel like play, they generate genuine social interaction, and they create conditions — manageable failure, collaborative challenge, shared focus — that clinicians and educators specifically seek.
The evidence base is growing, the use in clinical settings is expanding, and the games themselves are better than ever. Whether in a formal therapeutic context or simply at home, the right game creates conditions for growth that conversation alone rarely achieves.
