A Preliminary Evaluation of Virtual Reality Mindfulness Tool for Veterans with Pain and Anxiety.

Summary

A newly developed virtual reality-based mindfulness tool, DawnVRTM, showed high levels of acceptability and usability among military veterans. After a single session, most users reported decreases in anxiety, pain, and overall stress. The findings support the tool's ease of use and provide initial evidence that it may help veterans manage physical pain and anxiety, potentially improving their self-management of symptoms and overall care experience.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Veterans often face a unique combination of physical and mental health challenges resulting from their military service. Often, these health concerns require different approaches to care, resulting in gaps service and increased overall stress levels; however, mindfulness-based strategies have demonstrated potential for simultaneously addressing multiple physical and mental health concerns, such as chronic pain, anxiety and stress. This work presents the results of a collaboration with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) assessing the preliminary acceptability and usability of a newly developed virtual reality-based mindfulness tool, DawnVRTM. Results indicate that the DawnVRTM software had high levels of preliminary acceptability and usability. Moreover, the majority of users reported a decrease in their anxiety, pain and overall stress levels after one session of use. These data lend support for the acceptability, ease of use and provide initial effectiveness data on the use of DawnVRTM to assist in decreasing physical pain and anxiety in a sample of military service Veterans. Adding VR-based approaches to routine treatment has the potential to improve Veterans' overall experiences with care and may provide an option to improve Veterans self-management of their symptoms of pain and anxiety.