Content Writer: Krithika P V Content Editor: Safa Sajith Blog Designer: Isra Iqbal VR, as the name suggests is a virtually-created multi-dimensional environment that quite literally replicates the actual environment. It is a technology that reached a peak in the year 2017. This helps people to experience different worlds first-hand without actually having to go there. VR has been used as a source of entertainment as well as in therapy. What is the role of VR in maintaining a healthy mental state? Broadly, three approaches to VR technology have been used to maintain a peaceful state of mind in humans. The first approach aims at relaxation. It contains generic scenarios that are often nature-based which create a sense of calm and peace in one’s mind. Here, people are made to experience calming scenarios in VR that help refresh themselves and keep their minds at peace. The second approach aims at an engaging experience. People are made to experience certain VR environments where they are demanded to act or do some kind of activity that keeps them engaged and focused. This is used as a form of stress buster and also as a form of skill developer in humans. The third approach, and an idea that’s still in its infancy, is personalized VR. Here, VR environments are created specifically based on a person’s real-life incidents and environments that help the person connect on a deeper level. These experiences help the person overcome mental health issues on a greater level. What is the role of VR in therapy? Virtual Reality has risen as a new and effective form of technology in treating mental health patients. The same VR that was once accused of damaging our brains, has now been found as a means to fix it. In therapy, therapists expose their patients to VR to study their symptoms on a deeper level or help them fight anxieties by transporting them regularly to their anxious hubs to let them realize that the ‘threats’ or fears they face are not so dangerous after all. They also eventually learn to give up on their anxious reactions to those particular ‘threats’. This therapy, known as exposure therapy has been extensively used to cure anxiety and depression. VR has also been used to cure Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) ever since the ‘90s. In this disorder, people tend to face stress, nightmares, anxiety, and depression after they witness certain traumatic incidents in their lives. For therapy, those traumatic incidents are re-created on VR in a step-by-step process. The patients are exposed to these incidents over and over again under controlled conditions that help clinicians to study their behaviors, responses, and mental states better. Repeated visits to these traumatic sites also help these patients overcome that trauma over time. It has been used in the field of forensic psychiatry too. It has helped assess people with pedophilia and also to gauge the behavior of forensic inpatients in crime-related situations. Alzheimer’s diagnosis has been made easier by VR too. Alzheimer’s affects one’s ability to navigate and memory. Therefore, detection of these aspects previously required physical navigation and pen-paper memory tests. Now with affordable VR sets, clinicians set up virtual environments to detect the disorder. For example, a vanishing map is created in VR where the environment around you vanishes after passing by it, therefore, asking the patients to return to the starting point after having the surroundings vanished is a test of both navigation and memory. The above mentioned are just a few popularly selected disorders cured and detected by VR. The list of these disorders that have been made easier to detect and cure by VR is pretty high as researchers are still working on finding more ways to use this technology in fighting mental health issues. VR technology still has a long way to reach its full potential. References 1. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/virtual-reality-might-be-the-next- big-thing-for-mental-health/ 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4361984/ 3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6423066/ 4. https://www.beingpatient.com/virtual-reality-for-dementia-alzheimers-vr-therapy/
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