Researchers created a virtual world called RESeT to help improve the mood of teenagers. The world is snowy and includes six activities. In a study of 44 teens over 3 weeks, most of them used RESeT about twice a week without being told to. After using the virtual world, the teens reported feeling less stressed. This is important because teens today face a lot of stress from social media, the climate crisis, political division, and the challenges of a pandemic and online learning. Over the past decade, teens’ mental health has been getting worse, with higher levels of anxiety and depression after COVID-19 began.9 pandemic. Additionally, there is a shortage of mental health providers, with only 14 child and adolescent psychiatrists for every 100,000 children in the U.S.
To address this issue, University of Washington researchers conducted a study to determine if virtual reality could help reduce stress and improve mental health for teenagers. Collaborating with adolescents, the team created a snowy virtual world with six activities, such as stacking rocks and painting, based on practices known to enhance mental health.
In a 3-week study of 44 Seattle teens, researchers discovered that the teens utilized the technology an average of tTwice a week without being reminded, participants in a study experienced lower stress levels and an improved mood while using a particular system. However, their levels of anxiety and depression did not decrease overall.
The researchers shared their findings on April 22 in the journal JMIR XR and Spatial Computing. The system is not currently accessible to the public.
Lead author Elin Björling, a senior research scientist at the University of Washington’s human-centered design and engineering department, stated, “We know what methods work to support teenagers, but many of these techniques are inaccessible due to high counseling costs or a lack of available counselors.””We attempted to incorporate some proven methods into a more interactive setting, such as virtual reality, in order to make them more appealing to teenagers.”
The concept of Relaxation Environment for Stress in Teens, or RESeT, was born from conversations that researchers had with various groups of teenagers at Seattle Public Library locations over a two-year period. From these discussions, the team developed RESeT as an immersive winter environment with a forest that users could navigate by moving their arms (a behavior known to enhance mood) to control their virtual character. A signpost with six arrows directed users to different activities, each of which was based on techniques known to improve mental well-being.
There are various types of therapies that are used to improve mental health, including dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction.
One activity called “Riverboat” involves placing negative words in paper boats and watching them float down a river. Another activity, “Rabbit Hole,” requires participants to stand still by a stump, with more rabbits appearing the longer they remain still.
“During the collaboration process, we discovered that some teenagers had a fear of squirrels, which was unexpected,” Björling explained. “As a result, we removed all the squirrels from the design. I still have a Post-It note in my office that says ‘delete squirrels.’ However, people of all ages and genders enjoyed the concept of rabbits, so we created Rabbit Hole, where The benefit of staying calm and paying attention is that you will be surrounded by many rabbits.”
In order to test the potential impact of RESeT on the mental health of teenagers, the research team recruited 44 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 for the study. Each teenager was provided with a Meta Quest 2 headset and instructed to use RESeT three to five times per week. As the researchers wanted to observe if the teenagers would use RESeT regularly on their own, they did not provide any prompts or incentives to use the headsets after the study began. The teens were required to complete surveys assessing their stress and mood before and after each session.
On average, the teenagers utilized RESeT twice a week for 1The study found that using RESeT for 1.5 minutes at a time resulted in participants feeling less stressed and experiencing some improvements in mood. They generally liked using the headset. However, the study did not find significant effects on anxiety and depression. Co-author Jennifer Sonney, an associate professor in the UW School of Nursing, stated that the key findings of the study were reduced stress and improved mood, which was promising. She also mentioned that the study did not have a large enough participant group or a design to study long-term health impacts, but there were promising signals that teens enjoyed using RESeT.The researchers are eager to push the project ahead because they believe that eventually, individuals could use the VR system on their own. They intend to carry out a more extensive study with a control group in the future to determine if the VR system can have a lasting impact on mood and stress. Furthermore, they are interested in integrating artificial intelligence to personalize the VR experience and in exploring the possibility of offering VR headsets in schools or libraries to increase community access. Other co-authors of the study included Himanshu Zade, a lecturer at UW and a researcher at Microsoft, as well as Sofia Rodriguez, a senior manager at Electronic Arts who worked on this research while completing her master’s degree in human centered design at UW.The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Washington, including Edward A. Björling and Jesse Sonney from the department of human centered design and engineering, Hiranmayee Zade from the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Michael D. Pullmann, a research professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the UW School of Medicine, and Soo Hyun Moon, a senior product designer at Statsig who worked on the research as a UW master’s student in human centered design and engineering. The study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health through the UW ALACRITY Center, which funds mental health research at UW.
