Mental Health VR
Virtual Reality offers the opportunity to demonstrate modeled behaviour or present an uncomfortable or threatening environment in a much safer way, yet still elicit the same emotions due to the power of the immersive experience.
Clinicians and coaches can use the VR experiences as repeatable and predictable tools, without having to solely rely on the quality of their client's imagination.
Visualisation coaching
VR can be used to demonstrate leadership growth skills and interactions for those looking to enhance their current skills.
VR can be a 'safe place' to observe real world challenges successfully navigated, rather than learning in areas of much greater consequence.
Performance Practice
Public speaking and public performance can still be daunting for many, even with training and mental 'toolkits'.
Exposure examples lets the participant acclimatise to the feeling of many eyes upon them, and practice returning their focus in a safe environment. This works because, if created well, the human brain cannot distinguish between this crowd and a real one.
Phobia Exposure
Phobias are irrational fears and yet can debilitate the sufferer and prevent them interacting in the world, or living a life of paranoia. VR can be used as a clinicians tool to stage graduated exposure to a perceived 'threat', with the participant can desensitise gradually.
Behaviour Change
The truth is, many applications of VR could be filed under behaviour change (or culture change). From customer service to health and safety, it is often the case that the intended outcome is a different behaviour from an individual.
In a social service intervention or anti-violence program, VR offers the opportunity of experiential persuasion - giving a person an immersive viewpoint of what it might feel like to be in a more healthy, functional situation. VR can fill the gap where someone damaged by life circumstance is unable to imagine a better world.
Emotionally healthy relationships
Just the ability to watch a couple or family interact in a healthy way could be life-changing for someone who has never experienced that dynamic. By watching others employ emotional regulation, and successfully navigate debates and differences, the viewer comes away with a 'lived experience' of a better behaviour in a relationship, that they can use as a reference for their own lives.
Positive Visualisation
VR can be an opportunity for a participant to view success from a first person point of view. The brain feels this as a lived experience, and actually builds new neural connections based on this constructed 'memory'. This is ideal where a clinical client is struggling to imagine a clear picture of success due to the stubborn persistence of a negative mindset.
Domestic conflict modelling.
VR can be used as a positive and negative modelling device, where a therapist working with someone using violence can show crystal clear examples of better and worse behaviour. This can be very effective where the offender can be shown a scenario and then better ways to navigate the same scenario through modelled examples.