Frontiers in Virtual Reality<\/a>, was led by Zhipeng Lu and his doctoral student, Parya Khadan. Lu is an assistant professor in the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University, the associate director of the Center for Health Systems and Design, and a fellow of the Telehealth Institute at Texas A&M.<\/p>\nLu says intervention tools, such as virtual reality (VR), may be a valuable resource for tele-behavioral health counseling, in which mental health professionals support patients remotely through technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kind of intervention can be beneficial to a lot of people, having the potential to help those people with depression and anxiety. And I think that\u2019s the important thing we need to do,\u201d Lu says.<\/p>\n
The experiment created a virtual environment based on common reports from near-death experiences to explore their therapeutic impact.<\/p>\n
The study\u2019s participants\u2014students from the College of Architecture\u2014were surveyed before and after the intervention to evaluate changes in stress and death anxiety.<\/p>\n
Wearing a VR headset, students moved through three stages of virtual scenes to simulate a near-death experience. First, they felt an out-of-body sensation with their \u201cspirit\u201d rising from their body after a car accident. They traveled through a channel of light while experiencing memory flashbacks. Finally, they arrived at a scenic, peaceful landscape with a barrier they could not cross.<\/p>\n
Following the intervention, students showed a significant decrease in both stress and death anxiety, with many reflecting on life and relationships in new ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cResearch shows that those people who had a real near-death experience totally changed their view on life, and they have been treating their family members differently,\u201d Lu says. \u201cMost of them are really positive impacts for those having near-death experiences. We hope that immersive virtual reality can have the same impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some participants described the VR experience as relaxing and says it motivated them to focus on their loved ones and think about death in a different way. A minority of participants reported higher death anxiety or stress after the session.<\/p>\n
Lu and his team plan to expand the research to terminally ill patients and individuals with mental health challenges, although they note the need for caution due to limited data on potential risks for vulnerable groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a potentially really effective intervention for depression, but we have to be really, really careful about that,\u201d Lu says.<\/p>\n
The research was conducted in partnership with Olera Inc. and with support from the International Association of Near-Death Experience Studies, which provided the virtual reality video. Additional coauthors are from Texas A&M and Tarleton State University.<\/p>\n
Source: Texas A&M University<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Share this Article You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Researchers have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,156717,84,260],"class_list":["post-375376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fears","tag-health","tag-virtual-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}