Interactive Virtual Rooms: A New Approach to Anxiety and Pain Management

The coveted concept of utilizing Virtual Reality (VR) as a method for both medical and therapeutic treatment has been a subject of interest over the past few decades. VR immersive technologies can increase engagement and motivation in therapy and enable tailored scenarios. Previous studies using this technology, namely on burn patients, have demonstrated that VR has the potential to reduce anxiety and pain response during treatment, sparing expenditures in both traditional pain and anxiety relieving options. This paper presents a VR application, consisting of several rooms with relaxing activities inside which the user can navigate and interact with the objects. The application, designed in Unreal Engine for the HTC Vive Pro headset, was evaluated for its ability to create relaxing stimuli. Experimental results with volunteers indicate that it is easy to interact with the virtual environment, demonstrating high levels of presence and immersion and reporting a reduction in stress and anxiety levels.