How a fully immersive and soothing virtual reality experience can effectively treat pain and anxiety
Orange County, CA - September 15th 2016 - In 1935 American science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum published his science fiction piece, Pygmalion's Spectacles, about a pair of goggles that allowed the wearer to travel to a new place and see, smell, taste, and touch the world around them. The premise was an elaborate fantasy in Weinbaum’s time, but its description makes him a virtual reality visionary.
In the 21st century, virtual reality is exploding onto the scene, similarly to Weinbaum’s story. Companies from different industries like phone, video games, and internet organizations are all trying to get in on the market of VR. While most uses and research for the device are for entertainment purposes, one company is applying the technology to the medical field.
AppliedVR from Los Angeles California is using virtual reality to treat both pain and anxiety. In both an inpatient and outpatient setting, the VR applications are designed to deliver immersive, entertaining, and therapeutic content for patients.
There are two different applications currently, Pain RelieVR and Anxiety RelieVR. Both have proven effective in reducing pain and anxiety according to early studies through what is called distraction relief. This means if a patient is immersed in the VR world, they’re attention and negative emotions are away from the pain. In some cases proved to be superior to VR alternatives with similar gameplay and settings, missing the targeted multidisciplinary design.
Pain RelieVR is an interactive game where you’re attacked by adorable teddy bears and the only way to fight them is to blast them with your cannon. While this seems like a child’s game, over 3 pre-clinical trials, the Pain RelieVR showed over 136% improvement in pain tolerance.
Anxiety RelieVR transports the wearer to a beautiful area complete with sunset and water to soothe the patient. A relatively simple application but was proven to reduce anxiety 54 to 81% in non-clinical, clinical and corporate environments.
Another exciting advantage to the new technology is a way to treat pain without the use of opioids. While opioids have many legitimate medical uses such as helping relieve chronic pain, they come with harsh side effects and the risk of addiction. Even legitimate use of opioid narcotics can lead to both physical and psychological dependence.
The company plans on releasing more modules in the future to help address a wider range of health problems, such as lifestyle and autism. Matthew Stoudt, the CEO of AppliedVR, has said, “Once we understood [the power of VR to change attitudes and behaviors], we recognized that VR could be used to address some of society’s biggest issues like acute and chronic pain, anxiety, depression, autism, addiction, phobias and more.”
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How a fully immersive and soothing virtual reality experience can effectively treat pain and anxiety Orange County, CA – September 15th 2016 – In 1935 American science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum published his science fiction piece, Pygmalion’s Spectacles, about a pair of goggles that allowed the wearer to travel to a new place and see, smell, […]