Evaluating the Potential of the Metaverse as a Therapeutic Platform in Individuals with Depression (Preprint)

<sec> <title>BACKGROUND</title> Depression affects millions globally, with significant barriers to accessing effective therapy. The application of the Metaverse, a three-dimensional (3D) environment where users can interact with other users using avatars in a virtual world, has gained significant attention as a potential tool for depression treatment in recent years. </sec> <sec> <title>OBJECTIVE</title> This study investigates the potential of the Metaverse as a platform for eliciting therapeutic emotional responses in depressed individuals while they perform an emotional elicitation task in the Metaverse and a real-world environment. </sec> <sec> <title>METHODS</title> A between-subjects experiment involving 28 participants (14 with self-diagnosed depression and 14 with minimal or no depression) was conducted, with participants randomly assigned to either a real-world or Metaverse environment. Second Life (SL), a persistent 3D virtual world that utilizes human-like avatars for navigation, served as the metaverse environment, and a desktop computer represented the real-world settings. Participants watched emotion-eliciting video clips to evoke amusement, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness. They reported their emotional arousal, mental workload, and emotional engagement using a 16-item self-report inventory, the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX), and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), respectively. </sec> <sec> <title>RESULTS</title> The study found no significant differences between the real-world and Metaverse settings regarding perceived emotional arousal, mental workload, or emotional engagement, suggesting that SL offers comparable emotional responses to real-world environments. Furthermore, participants with minimal or no depression reported lower perceived effort in the SL environment compared to the real-world setting, indicating the Metaverse’s potential to alleviate cognitive stress during emotionally eliciting tasks. </sec> <sec> <title>CONCLUSIONS</title> These findings suggest that Metaverse platforms may offer viable alternatives for therapeutic interventions for depression. </sec>