Virtual reality may be the next frontier in remote mental health care

Conversation January 13, 2020
Shiva Pedram, Associate Research Fellow, University of Wollongong

In recent years, experts have focused on finding better ways to improve remotely delivered mental health care.

Now, virtual reality (VR) may pave the way for myriad new opportunities.

Using VR for remote therapy involves conducting “face-to-face” sessions in a virtual environment. This mode of treatment could make counselling more accessible to those living and working remotely.

My colleagues and I published a paper exploring VR’s potential in providing counselling for people in regional areas.

While face-to-face therapy remains the optimal treatment method, we discovered VR-based therapy was more effective than Skype-based counselling.

Taking advantage of available tools

We compared the experiences of 30 participants aged 21 to 63, who participated in both VR-based and Skype-based mock counselling sessions.

To...

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