scholarly journals COVID Feel Good - an easy self-help virtual reality protocol to overcome the psychological burden of coronavirus

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Riva
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Psychological Burden ◽  
Self Help

scholarly journals COVID Feel Good—An Easy Self-Help Virtual Reality Protocol to Overcome the Psychological Burden of Coronavirus

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Riva ◽  
Luca Bernardelli ◽  
Matthew H. E. M. Browning ◽  
Gianluca Castelnuovo ◽  
Silvia Cavedoni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Psychological Burden ◽  
Self Help

scholarly journals COVID Feel Good – An Easy Self-Help Virtual Reality Protocol to Overcome the Psychological Burden of Coronavirus

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Riva ◽  
Luca Bernardelli ◽  
Matthew H E M Browning ◽  
Gianluca Castelnuovo ◽  
Silvia Cavedoni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Pragmatic Trial ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Psychological Burden ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Surgical Masks ◽  
The Secret Garden

Background: Living in the time of the COVID-19 means experiencing not only a global health emergency but also extreme psychological stress with potential emotional side effects such as sadness, grief, irritability and mood swings. Crucially, lockdown and confinement measures isolate people who become the first and the only ones in charge of their own mental health: people are left alone facing a novel and potentially lethal situation, and, at the same time, they need to develop adaptive strategies to face it, at home. In this view, easy-to-use, inexpensive, and scientifically validated self-help solutions aiming to reduce the psychological burden of coronavirus are extremely necessary.Aims: This pragmatic trial aims to provide the evidence that a weekly self-help virtual reality (VR) protocol can help overcome the psychological burden of the Coronavirus by relieving anxiety, improving well-being and reinforcing social connectedness. The protocol will be based on the “Secret Garden” 360 VR video online (www.covidfeelgood.com) which simulates a natural environment aiming to promote relaxation and self-reflexion. 360° or spherical videos allow the user to control the viewing direction. In this way, the user can explore the content from any angle like a panorama and experience presence and immersion. The “Secret Garden” video is combined with daily exercises that are designed to be experienced with another person (not necessarily physically together), to facilitate a process of critical examination and eventual revision of core assumptions and beliefs related to personal identity, relationships and goals.Methods: This is a multicentric, pragmatic pilot randomized controlled trial involving individuals who experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and underwent a lockdown and quarantine procedures. The trial is approved by the Ethics Committee of the Istituto Auxologico Italiano. Each research group in all the countries joining the pragmatic trial, aims at enrolling at least 30 individuals in the experimental group experiencing the self-help protocol, and 30 in the control group, over a period of 3 months to verify the feasibility of the intervention.Conclusion: The goal of this protocol is for VR to become the “surgical mask” of mental health treatment. Although surgical masks do not provide the wearer with a reliable level of protection against the coronavirus compared with FFP2 or FFP3 masks, surgical masks are very effective in protecting others from the wearer’s respiratory emissions. The goal of the VR protocol is the same: not necessarily to solve complex mental health problems but rather to improve well-being and preserve social connectedness.

On the (Virtual) Road

2017 ◽  
pp. 164-179
Author(s):  
Robert Matthew Poole
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Jack Kerouac ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Us ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
The Individual

In the US, travel writing and the travel novel have historically held important positions in the literary landscape –not only as self-help guides and conveyances for empirical information but also as vehicles for satire, social commentary and analyses of the human condition. John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac and William Least Heat-Moon are just a few of the important 20th century authors who have made insightful use of this genre. Today, increasingly realistic virtual reality environments have been sculpted, imbued with creative content and populated with both artificial agents and real avatars on a scale that can be measured in hundreds of virtual square miles. In some cases, the content is thematic and designed; in others it has grown up spontaneously through the individual contributions and creativity of users and small groups. It is this spontaneous blossoming of art, culture and ideas sprawling across increasingly spacious and interconnected virtual landscapes that presents us with the opportunity to continue the tradition of the epic travel story across new virtual territory.

Reducing Anxiety Using Self-Help Virtual Reality Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Darren Piercey ◽  
Kate Charlton ◽  
Carl Callewaert
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy ◽  
Behavioral Therapy ◽  
Cognitive Behavioral ◽  
Self Help

Serious Games and Gamified Tools for Psychological Intervention

2018 ◽  
pp. 654-679
Author(s):  
Unai Diaz-Orueta
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Serious Games ◽  
Psychological Intervention ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Behavioral Assessment ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Psychological Wellbeing ◽  
Psychological Interventions ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Technological Advances

Mobile technologies and technological advances in behavioral assessment have found their way in common healthcare practices. However, there are still few studies about videogame-based interventions to support concrete psychological treatments. While the market for self-help mobile apps is continuously increasing, in most cases, they are a mere digitalization of texts contained in self-help books and do not take advantage of the interactive and playful potential of devices on which they are offered. Nevertheless, a number of health games have been developed for children and adults for a variety of therapeutic purposes. The current chapter provides an overview of the state-of-the-art serious games currently available as psychological interventions across popular delivery formats (virtual reality environments, online and PC videogames). Where available, evidence about their efficacy is reported. These serious games have the potential to complement traditional psychological interventions and improve psychological wellbeing for people of all ages.

Serious Games and Gamified Tools for Psychological Intervention

2016 ◽  
pp. 290-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Unai Diaz-Orueta
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Serious Games ◽  
Psychological Intervention ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Behavioral Assessment ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Psychological Wellbeing ◽  
Psychological Interventions ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Technological Advances

Mobile technologies and technological advances in behavioral assessment have found their way in common healthcare practices. However, there are still few studies about videogame-based interventions to support concrete psychological treatments. While the market for self-help mobile apps is continuously increasing, in most cases, they are a mere digitalization of texts contained in self-help books and do not take advantage of the interactive and playful potential of devices on which they are offered. Nevertheless, a number of health games have been developed for children and adults for a variety of therapeutic purposes. The current chapter provides an overview of the state-of-the-art serious games currently available as psychological interventions across popular delivery formats (virtual reality environments, online and PC videogames). Where available, evidence about their efficacy is reported. These serious games have the potential to complement traditional psychological interventions and improve psychological wellbeing for people of all ages.

scholarly journals Relaxation Degree Analysis Using Frontal Electroencephalogram Under Virtual Reality Relaxation Scenes

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue Zhang ◽  
Lulu Zhang ◽  
Haoqiang Hua ◽  
Jianxiu Jin ◽  
Lingqing Zhu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Gradient Boosting ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Relaxation Therapy ◽  
Random Forest Regression ◽  
Alpha Wave ◽  
Psychological Burden ◽  
Eeg Data ◽  
Severity Of Depression ◽  
Electroencephalogram Eeg

Increasing social pressure enhances the psychological burden on individuals, and the severity of depression can no longer be ignored. The characteristics of high immersion and interactivity enhance virtual reality (VR) application in psychological therapy. Many studies have verified the effectiveness of VR relaxation therapy, although a few have performed a quantitative study on relaxation state (R-state). To confirm the effectiveness of VR relaxation and quantitatively assess relaxation, this study confirmed the effectiveness of the VR sightseeing relaxation scenes using subjective emotion scale and objective electroencephalogram (EEG) data from college students. Moreover, some EEG features with significant consistent differences after they watched the VR scenes were detected including the energy ratio of the alpha wave, gamma wave, and differential asymmetry. An R-state regression model was then built using the model stacking method for optimization, of which random forest regression, AdaBoost, gradient boosting (GB), and light GB were adopted as the first level, while linear regression and support vector machine were applied at the second level. The leave-one-subject-out method for cross-validation was used to evaluate the results, where the mean accuracy of the framework achieved 81.46%. The significantly changed features and the R-state model with over 80% accuracy have laid a foundation for further research on relaxation interaction systems. Moreover, the VR relaxation therapy was applied to the clinical treatment of patients with depression and achieved preliminary good results, which might provide a possible method for non-drug treatment of patients with depression.

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