Immerse yourself in a Virtual environment

What if you could show your therapist, friends, family or the people around you what's going on inside your head?

When researching into how Virtual Reality can help people with mental health illnesses, I had come across an app called Sea Hero Quest- a game designed for people with dementia. The idea is for you to play it and if you follow the right navigation points that are structured in the game, then your cognitive functions are fine. If not, then the research is used to see whether that person is starting to show signs of dementia.

The general idea got me thinking about putting an app and virtual reality together. What if there was an app that could have virtual environments on there replicating people's symptoms of their mental illnesses? It could help patients better describe how they feel to their therapist, or even to their friends or family members.

A model virtual environment showing symptoms of social anxiety

I got in contact with Connor Lloyd- a graduate games developer student who's also produced a dissertation on how high levels of immersion affects the brain and we worked on a prototype that could replicate a virtual environment for mental health in the future.

*Warning, may be triggering* Click play to watch the video below

In no way is this meant to trigger people with symptoms of social anxiety, but the inspiration came from my mother, who has suffered from social anxiety since she was a teen. She'd sometimes have to hold onto me when we're out shopping because there's too many people which gives her a slight panic attack. She describes to me that yes, she knows its busy and there's going to be people shopping but its when its so crowded and you have to squeeze and push amongst people that sends her anxiety out of control.

This is why I wanted to create a model of a potential virtual environment that could perhaps be accessed online for people to use. Like myself, who could have helped my mother better by seeing a video like this and being able to understand exactly the feelings inside her head.

Virtually Better wants to get people talking about mental health and push for new ways for people to express whats going on inside their heads. #VirtuallyBetter