Fancy a serene stroll down a white beach?
You won’t have to go much further than your bedroom, as virtual reality programs will soon be offering a calming environment with the choice of meditation.
Or, as seen in the news this week, they’re now aiding the recovery of a 17-year-old woman who was left unable to walk after a stroke.
Shannon Mackey was left wheelchair-bound and unable to use the left side of her body. But with traditional physiotherapy along with virtual reality sessions at the charity-run Brain and Spinal Injury Centre (BASIC), she has regained motion in her arms and legs.
She told BBC Radio 5 Live: ‘[Virtual Reality sessions] have helped so much… If I didn’t come here I don’t think I’d be where I am today.’
The NHS has predicted that 2017 will ‘become the year of virtual reality’. Commonly known to take gaming to the next level, VR headsets are spreading into the health and fitness world for therapy and physical activity.
Despite a forecast by the NHS that claims could arise of heavy users being treated away from the real world entirely, there are health benefits being proven by science.
1. DEPRESSION THERAPY
The potential for treating mental health problems with virtual reality is in its starting process. In the UK, a trial was done whereby 15 people being treated for depression by the NHS were transported to a virtual world with a headset.
They were shown an adult avatar, which replicated the patient’s own body’s movements, a process known as embodiment.
The patients were then shown an avatar of a child crying, which was in a mirror. They were asked to comfort the child, using compassionate and consoling phrases.
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Calming experience: The potential of VR for helping calm that critical inner voice that so often plagues those with depression and anxiety is enormous, as demonstrated by a study in the UK
Then the roles were reversed, and the patient embodied the child.
The adult spoke the same words of love and reassurance that they had. This visible and audible compassion softened the patients’ self-critical traits, and nine of the 15 subjects’ level of depression was reduced a month after the trial.
‘People who struggle with anxiety and depression can be excessively self-critical when things go wrong in their lives’, explains study lead Chris Brewin, professor of clinical psychology at University College London.
Although this was only a small study, it showed the potential of VR for helping calm that critical inner voice that so often plagues those with depression and anxiety.
2. OVERCOMING PHOBIAS
Virtual reality therapy is helping people overcome their phobias too.
IgnisVR’s Arachnophobia offers to help those with a fear of spiders with exposure therapy, which gradually introduces someone to the object they fear in the hope of desensitizing it.
In Arachnophobia, the player is invited to sit at a table where they can then invite spiders from a cage at their own pace.
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IgnisVR’s Arachnophobia offers to help those with a fear of spiders with exposure therapy
Martin Segers, the co-founder of IgnisVR, says the app is testing the waters and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
However, the benefits of VR exposure therapy has shown its effectiveness in an American study.
Twenty-three participants were encouraged to gradually and safely approach a virtual spider. After, 83 per cent of patients showed significant improvement.
3. FULL BODY WORKOUT
Bored of the lack of scenery whilst running on the treadmill? VR company Icaros has created a physical activity virtual experience, revealed at CES (a consumer and electronics trade show) in Las Vegas.
The full body system, which you lie on in a plank position, relies on your core strength to control the game you are visualising.
The movements on the platform correspond with the actions in the headset, and works different parts of the body depending on the game you are playing.
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Icaros has created a physical activity virtual experience, revealed at CES in Las Vegas
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Source: DailyMail UK