Virtual Reality for Stress, Anxiety, and Pain Management
Written by: Annakila Jepsen & Henry Weber
One of Virtual Reality’s main benefits is its ability to be used as a multi-purpose tool to address a variety of needs. With a single virtual reality headset, you can have access to a variety of applications that serve both patients and providers in healthcare through a truly unique and immersive experience. You can count on innovators around the world to be working on virtual reality applications in their focus area as a new and beneficial solution for a variety of use cases.
At Neuro Rehab VR, we have designed our product solution to also be a multi-purpose, comprehensive solution for therapy practices and healthcare settings. We’ve done this by creating applications and physical therapy exercises that focus on different areas of the body and patient demographics. We’ve also expanded to include therapies like cognitive and social interaction training. One of our latest additions to our platform suite is Haven, an immersive visual, auditory, and haptic experience that helps to address and alleviate stress and anxiety.
Haven is a virtual reality experience that can be utilized by any individual wanting an escape from a stressful reality. It’s a free roam relaxing experience where you can explore a tropical island, interact with animals, find secret treasures, skip stones, listen to soothing beach waves along with meditative music, and relax. Facilities with more patient downtime, such as senior care living centers or in-patient hospitals, may utilize immersive VR tools outside of their active treatment therapy time. It is incredibly helpful when patients may be dealing with chronic pain and are looking for something to help them manage other than opioids.
Screenshots from inside the Neuro Rehab VR application Haven.
The decision to create this game is based on the promising outcomes we’ve seen with research, patient needs, facility requests, and an overall good fit for our expanding platform suite of healthcare applications. Over the last several years, many research studies have been published supporting virtual reality’s use in alleviating and reducing stress, anxiety, depression, and pain for individuals. Virtual reality has the unique ability to remove the patient from their current state and immerse all of their senses into a much more enjoyable and distracting experience to help manage various psychiatric disorders. You can find many of these studies on our Research Page.
One study looked at utilizing virtual reality in an emergency department and showed positive results for helping those patients to immediately alleviate their pain through immersive and distracting virtual reality. (1) This particular study appealed to us because it covered a variety of patients under extreme circumstances that could benefit from this type of care.
Harv Rev Psychiatry did another study regarding the use of virtual reality for the treatment of anxiety-related psychiatric disorders. (2) This study outlines the benefits and obstacles in using virtual reality for a wide variety of psychiatric disorders, including chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), as well as quite a few others. One of the biggest advantages of using virtual reality for these cases was the ability to have a completely controlled environment that can be adjusted according to the patient’s specific needs.
One use case they focused on was with a patient undergoing treatment for a fear of flying. The root of their anxiety related to turbulence on airplanes, so with using VR, they were able to experience a turbulence-free flight. VR becomes a powerful tool for enabling the patient to experience a fearful situation in a safe way and to help overcome that fear.
Distracting the brain is another common method leveraged throughout history and now to a whole new level in immersive VR. Getting on your phone, doing something relaxing or enjoyable, and simply extracting yourself from whatever circumstance that has caused a negative impact on you, are phenomenal tactics in stress reduction. Much like what is taught through yoga, these therapeutic tendencies have long been researched and sought after for reductions in stress and anxiety.
Virtual reality is no different when it comes to this type of treatment. It simply does more. While a yoga studio offers a relaxing place to get away, practice breathing and relaxation, virtual reality creates this place wherever you want it. In many cases, it takes years of practice and discipline for an individual to be able to clear their mind and achieve the full benefits of meditation. Mindfulness is something that is taught in these cases, which has been defined as “the act of consciously focusing the mind in the present moment without judgment and without attachment to the moment.”
In another recent study, research was conducted to determine the effectiveness of facilitating mindfulness through VR. (3) “Participants showed a significant increase in mindfulness state and showed an improved emotional state after their VR session“ according to the results from this study. Additionally, participants reported that they would ”highly recommend the VR system to others.”
While these articles only demonstrate a handful of use cases for VR treatment for psychiatric disorders, we are able to derive a number of distinct advantages in its use. Virtual reality provides a fully controlled environment that can be engineered to suit needs on an individual basis. In addition to being enjoyable for many of its users, it allows the senses to be stimulated. It gives patients a fully immersive experience in place of using their imagination, which may not come as easily.
With the pros vastly outweighing the cons for this technology, we are excited to touch on and highlight our latest application Haven, developed to offer a soothing and enjoyable meditative experience for those looking for alternative ways to manage anxiety and stress and to help combat the opioid epidemic. This application and the rest of our Neuro Rehab VR platform suite of exercises are now available with our product XR Therapy System and included with our essential and business software plans. Reach out to us at info@neurorehabvr.com for a demonstration or more information.