Role of Virtual Reality in Anxiety Reduction
It is estimated that more than 4% of the world’s population suffers from Anxiety disorder and one of the biggest reasons for the same is the irregular lifecycle that most of us end up following.
The pace of life has taken a toll on almost everyone, whether it is rich or poor, young or old almost everyone undergoes stressful situations every day.
Stressful jobs, financial insecurities, relationship troubles, obesity, lack of sleep, or merely just the feeling of missing out on social media are some of the reasons which may lead to stress, which in turn leads to anxiety disorder, severely affecting the body and mind.
There is no doubt that anxiety disorder is more common than one may think and at some stage or the other everyone suffers from stress and anxiety but the bright side of the story is all these problems now has a noninvasive/non-pharma & drug-free treatment.
Researches around the globe and some successful implementations have shown that immersing oneself in soothing, controlled, and customized VR games for anxiety reduction provide calm, focus, and also develops emotional resilience.
To illustrate one may wear the VR headset to experience the journey to the outer world or under deep water or may just meditate and concentrate in an immersive & non-distractive way on opening the body Chakras.
What makes VR most effective is its ability to completely engross the user leaving no place for distraction and fight with occupation stress with virtual reality, this also makes virtual reality most suited for beginners or people who have never tried VR meditation or are mindfully aware of the very moment.
This digital one-to-one home-based solution for finding calm and focus to deal with anxiety has shown to provide mood upliftment in just under 8 minutes.
The traditional digital interventions like listening to songs, watching soothing videos, etc. could never achieve this because all of them leave a lot of space for distraction and negative thoughts to creep in.
The decreasing cost of hardware and the presence of huge research reports in this field has opened up gates to make Virtual Reality the go-to solution for anxiety disorder and depression.
In addition to the remote monitoring and customization of soothing journeys based on an individual’s age, stage, and severity, the VR journeys have proven benefits of increasing the happiness quotient of the user by 200%.
Related post: Treating Depression and Anxiety with Virtual Reality
This indirectly reduces stress by more than 60%, in turn, reducing the chance of an emotional outburst by 40%.
These journeys have also shown a 66% reduction in depressive tendencies & a 300% improvement in the emotional resilience of special children.
In addition to the calming immersive journeys, VR also provides for gamified cognitive exercises which distract the users from real-life situations and engrosses him/her in outcome-driven tasks.
To illustrate one may end up playing virtual football, basketball, or playing the drum in front of the virtual crowd. The virtual instructor-based exercises where the user sees the instructor in front of him/her and replicates the point of the exercises by point also helps the user to focus and move away from the anxious life situations.
Therapists all over the world are well aware of the benefits of VR like anxiety reduction, increase in happiness, improvement in special children reduced chances of emotional outbursts, therefore they are continuously working to promote the use of VR to treat their patients.
One of the pioneering VR healthcare solution providers in India known to reduce anxiety through VR interventions is Cognihab, based out of Jaipur.
Cognihab provides a depression module for patients suffering from depression, a surgical module for patients suffering from a pre-surgery anxiety disorder, a meditation module, a sleep module & feel good module for users looking to find calm and happiness.
