Virtual reality can improve teenagers’ mental wellbeing, study finds

Spending time in a soothing virtual reality (VR) environment can reduce stress and improve mood among teenagers, a study has found.

The University of Washington researchers worked for two years with groups of teenagers to develop a VR environment called Relaxation Environment for Stress in Teens (RESeT). The RESeT environment featured a snowy, open world with a forest and interactive activities based on evidence-based mental health practices, including dialectical behaviour therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction. These activities were intended to engage teens and help them manage stress.

The study itself, which involved 44 teens aged 14 to 18 from Seattle and lasted three weeks, is published in the journal JMIR XR and Spatial Computing  The teenagers all received a Meta Quest 2 VR headset and were instructed to use the RESeT environment three to five times a week. They were not given any prompts or incentives to use the VR system, enabling the researchers to observe their natural usage patterns. To assess the impact of the VR environment, the participants completed surveys before and after each session, measuring their stress levels and mood. These surveys provided data on how the VR sessions affected their immediate emotional state.

The RESeT environment included six specific activities designed to improve mental health:

• Riverboat: This involved placing negative words into paper boats and sending them down a river, symbolising the release of negative emotions.
• Rabbit Hole: Participants stood still near a stump, and as they remained calm, rabbits appeared, rewarding their stillness and attention.
• Rock Stacking: This required the teenagers to stack rocks to focus their attention and practice mindfulness.
• Painting: The teenagers painted on a surface, with their artwork gradually disappearing to emphasise the temporary nature of stress.
• Bird Search: Participants listened for bird calls and located the birds, enhancing auditory mindfulness.
• Scavenger Hunt: This involved searching for rocks labelled with positive words, reinforcing positive thinking.

Potential tool for managing stress

The researchers found that the teenagers used the VR environment an average of twice a week for about 11.5 minutes per session without any external prompting. This regular usage showed that the participants found the environment engaging and were willing to incorporate it into their routines. When using the RESeT environment, they reported feeling significantly less stressed, and experienced slight improvements in mood during the sessions. This suggests that the immersive and interactive nature of the VR activities had a positive immediate effect on their emotional state.

Despite these positive short-term effects, the study did not find significant reductions in levels of anxiety and depression among the participants over the three-week period. Although the VR environment succeeded in providing momentary relief from stress, it did not result in long-term changes in the teens’ broader mental health metrics. However, the researchers believe their findings show the VR environment has potential as a supplementary tool for managing stress. “Self-administered VR for mental health may be an effective intervention for reducing adolescent stress,” they write. “However, understanding barriers (including disengagement) to using VR, as well as further encouraging participatory design with teens, may be imperative to the success of future mental health interventions.”

Elin Björling, lead author on the study, noted the importance of making effective mental health practices accessible in engaging formats: “We know what works to help support teens, but a lot of these techniques are inaccessible because they’re locked into counselling, which can be expensive, or the counsellors just aren’t available. So we tried to take some of these evidence-based practices, but put them in a much more engaging environment, like VR, so the teens might want to do them on their own.”