Virtual Reality and Mental Healthcare

• I created this course to be a theoretically integrative course focused on the use of Virtual Reality (VR) in the field of Mental Health, specifically Psychology, from a scientific and evidence-based point of view. You don’t need any kind of prior knowledge to understand what I present here.

The professional use of VR systems in the field of mental health is already an effective reality. Almost four decades have passed since the first intersection, and it’s a current field of knowledge that already has applications for various mental health symptoms and disorders (Anxiety, Depression, PTSD, ASD, Schizophrenia, Eating and Binge disorders, Substance abuse, Coping strategies, Social Skills, etc.).

We are considering a digital simulation in which our experiences can have an effective and lasting impact in real life, using a system that allows total control over the perceptual stimuli presented to achieve greater precision when implementing different therapeutic strategies. VR is not a new form of therapy, but rather a set of technological developments that can serve as resources in the clinical field to conduct interventions more ecologically and effectively.

VR systems offer the possibility of living a digital experience in a controlled and protected environment where patients can begin to explore, experiment, and act freely or through specific tasks. We have created the possibility of inhabiting, feeling, and remembering our actions and those of others in digital simulations. We have created one more escape from reality into the virtuality of the fantastic.

Connecting to a global network in which our being may interact with others through an interface is not an irrelevant phenomenon to happen; It can change our ways of communicating, of behaving and learning, of building knowledge. However, all this can affect us in a complex way without us realizing it; we are largely unaware of these effects most of the time.

If you are interested in what happens (to us) when we use a VR system (human-machine interaction POV), then this is the course you’re looking for.

At the end of each class you’ll be able to access a list with all the references and sources I used, for you to be able to look up as much additional information and details as you want.