360° Videos for Immersive Mental Health Interventions: a Systematic Review

Abstract

Virtual reality is increasingly recognized as a powerful method for clinical interventions in the mental health field, but has yet to achieve mainstream adoption in routine mental healthcare settings. A similar, yet slightly different technology, immersive 360° videos might have the potential to cover this gap, by requiring both lower costs and less technical skills to construct and operate such virtual environments. This systematic review therefore aims to identify, evaluate, and summarize mental health interventions using immersive 360° videos to support an understanding of their implementation in daily clinical practice. The quality of the 14 selected studies was evaluated using a critical appraisal tool, addressing populations with clinical levels of psychopathological symptoms, somatic conditions associated with psychological implications, and other at-risk groups. Immersive 360° videos successfully increased users’ feelings of presence, given their realistic features, and therefore yielded positive outcomes in clinical interventions where presence is considered as an essential precondition. Because the technical skills required to create immersive 360° video footage are fairly limited, most of the interventions using this approach have been created by mental health researchers or clinicians themselves. Immersive 360° videos are still in an early phase of implementation as a tool for clinical interventions for mental health, resulting in high heterogeneity in focus, procedures, and research designs. An important next step for making use of this technology may therefore involve the creation of standardized procedures, as a means to increase the quality of research and evidence-based interventions.

The Symbiosis of Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy and Telemental Health: A Review

“…There is a growing variety of off-the-shelf VR solutions that may be used to minimize development challenges and provide clinical benefit. Instead of designing and maintaining computergenerated visuals for VRET, researchers have used consumer camera systems (e.g., GoPro) to make 360 VR videos (Stupar-Rutenfrans et al, 2017;Ionescu et al, 2021). This technique facilitates production of predictable exposure hierarchies with photorealistic visuals and low production costs (Holmberg et al, 2020).…”

Appraising Virtual Technologies’ Impact on Older Citizens’ Mental Health—A Comparative between 360° Video and Virtual Reality

“…VR technology has improved dramatically over the last decade, offering better quality and accessible pricing [ 20 , 35 , 36 ] and providing affordable tools for entertainment and clinical healthcare [ 32 , 37 , 38 , 39 ]. With this emerging technology, it is possible to create highly immersive and realistic environments for individuals with reduced mobility [ 32 , 37 , 40 ].…”

“…‘Immersion’ is the degree to which a virtual reality experience can stimulate the senses of the user and it is achieved by manipulating a set of high-fidelity audio and visual components [ 39 ]. The stimulation of senses, created by immersive environments, is considered a key contributing factor in the achievement of believable experiences [ 37 , 38 , 39 ]. The management of stress caused by immersion is a key criterion in the evaluation of the suitability of an immersive experience.…”

“…The response to immersion can produce a feeling of ‘being somewhere else’ rather than at the current physical location [ 10 , 38 , 39 , 57 ]. The response can range from unconscious physiological processes (cerebral, cardiac, and breathing) to deliberate behaviors [ 38 ], for example, trying to interact with objects in a virtualized scenario.…”

“…Formatted as a playable video, where the user has a 360° view of the real world accessed through a VR headset, the user has otherwise limited control (the ability to stop, restart, pause, and choose a route at particular junctures). Moreover, 360° videos provide a quick and less expensive way to develop immersive virtual environments for older people [ 38 ]. The 360° videos demonstrate a capacity to capture the user’s sense of presence by using video reproduction techniques, for example, positioning the camera at an adaptive height to suit the viewpoint of the user (user may be seated or standing up, for example), using surround sound to captivate attention, and selecting the greatest image resolution possible [ 38 ].…”