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Project
Immersive Mental Health - VR relaxation with biofeedback
Stress is a challenge that our society is increasingly facing. The care and welfare sector in particular has been struggling with this for a long time. The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced this effect. Vulnerabilities became clearly visible and, both within the general population and among care providers, quarantine measures, anxiety about one's own health, working from home and/or working in challenging conditions led to a sharp increase in stress and stress-related complaints. Structural solutions - also after the pandemic - are important for dealing with (chronic) stress, such as additional investment in (mental) health care and welfare. This can be done by strengthening traditional care, such as 1-on-1 conversations, but also by expanding the existing digital offer. This is still scarce, but is more scalable and will therefore have a major positive impact.
An important pillar in that digital offering is guided self-help. This way, anyone struggling with stress complaints is given the tools to deal with them themselves. For mild complaints, this can be done independently, but for more serious complaints, counsellors can also combine guided self-help with one-on-one conversations. These are often text-based (written text or websites) or sometimes multimedia (instruction videos, audio fragments). Immersive technology (ImT), such as virtual reality (VR), combined with biofeedback (wearable), as described in literature, will enrich that existing offer. The calming breathing and relaxation exercises are controlled in that environment by measuring stress-related psychophysiological parameters (such as heart rate, breathing and skin conductance, among others) using a wearable. So why is this potential not (yet) being exploited in Flanders? On the one hand, there is extensive technological knowledge about developing immersive and biofeedback technology, but companies have insufficient knowledge about combining both technologies. The synergy of both technologies provides an additional added value that is still unheard of in Flanders. On the other hand, care and welfare institutions have a clear interest in the possibilities of ImT, but an offer tailored to Flemish users is lacking.
An important pillar in that digital offering is guided self-help. This way, anyone struggling with stress complaints is given the tools to deal with them themselves. For mild complaints, this can be done independently, but for more serious complaints, counsellors can also combine guided self-help with one-on-one conversations. These are often text-based (written text or websites) or sometimes multimedia (instruction videos, audio fragments). Immersive technology (ImT), such as virtual reality (VR), combined with biofeedback (wearable), as described in literature, will enrich that existing offer. The calming breathing and relaxation exercises are controlled in that environment by measuring stress-related psychophysiological parameters (such as heart rate, breathing and skin conductance, among others) using a wearable. So why is this potential not (yet) being exploited in Flanders? On the one hand, there is extensive technological knowledge about developing immersive and biofeedback technology, but companies have insufficient knowledge about combining both technologies. The synergy of both technologies provides an additional added value that is still unheard of in Flanders. On the other hand, care and welfare institutions have a clear interest in the possibilities of ImT, but an offer tailored to Flemish users is lacking.
Date:1 Sep 2022 → Today
Keywords:Immersive Technologies, Mental Health, VR, Relaxation, Biofeedback
Disciplines:Other engineering and technology not elsewhere classified, Engineering psychology