Overcome Social Anxiety through Immersion in Virtual Reality

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Developing digital therapeutic Extended Reality (XR) solutions to provide mental healthcare services is an innovative initiation that will be implemented as a part of the UK's formal mental healthcare ecosystem.There is a need to undertake a research and development feasibility study in the application of extended reality (XR) to provide mental healthcare services that have the potential to be adopted at scale to form part of the UK's formal mental healthcare ecosystem.Our objective is to explore how to overcome social anxiety through Immersion in Virtual Reality which will be useful in digital therapeutic content and provide positive mental health outcomes for adults. In order to do so we shall utilize our existing suite of award-winning soft skills courses, which combine e-learning with practice online and in Virtual Reality, and launch 3 major scenarios:\* **Scenario 1:** 1:1 meeting simulation with someone new\* **Scenario 2:** Managing the nerves and body language simulation\* **Scenario 3:** Communication and performance management simulationAs a part of the deep analysis, we shall contact CBT therapists and support groups (e.g. [Anxiety UK][0]) about testing VR scenarios with their clients and volunteers having the social anxiety problem in the past and are willing to help both young adults (aged 13 and above) and older adults to overcome the fear of situations in which they may be judged negatively, interacted or talked with strangers, noticed that they look anxious, worry about embarrassing or humiliating themselves to see if it can help manage or improve levels of social anxiety.The program participants will put on a VR headset from their location, and participate in various simulations in VR where they would be immersed in realistic virtual environments such as a networking event, familiar and unfamiliar faces, connect with deliberate body language, move, gesture, and stand with poise and confidence, use body language to convey calm and authority in difficult situations, etc.Per shared experience, we shall gather feedback from patients and therapists after early trial sessions and work with a social anxiety / CBT consultant, to understand how the VR app can be made more effective at dealing with social anxiety and modify scenarios to understand any differences in product development needed for young adults and older adults and plan on how the solution can be rolled out at scale, to provide a broad benefit to the UK mental health sector.[0]: https://www.anxietyuk.org.uk/