Metaverse Health

Although not directly health-related, I was struck by the power of the machinima below ( thanks to Mal Burns for the heads-up). It’s produced by Lainy Voom and you can read more about it here.

Have a look for yourself then read on below for some further thoughts:

Fall (Mini Project 3) from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

There’s no doubting to power of music in therapy and imagery certainly plays its role as well. It’s not hard to foresee a growing interest in the creation of machinima as a therapeutic device. The ability to create content relatively cheaply opens up a range of new possibilities. Imagine family therapists, gestalt counsellors and those with a cognitive behavioural approach (to name three I’m very familiar with professionally) utilising virtual worlds as platforms for intervention and exploration with clients. Here’s one very basic example: systematic desensitisation.

Let’s say I’m terrified of spiders. I contact a psychologist who utilises a virtual world like Second Life. She does an initial session with me viewing virtual spiders from a distance. Then my avatar interacts with the spiders directly. The next step may be something like viewing real-life spiders on a virtual screen and so the process continues. It’s then filmed for playback by the as therapeutically indicated.

The applications for broader mental health, relationships counselling, addictions counselling, domestic violence and sexuality issues are a long way from being fully explored. What’s apparent however, is that there’s a significant opportunity that needs to be empirically investigated.

As always, I’d be interested in hearing from anyone doing research or currently working in the area – do you think this is likely to be a viable approach in the near-future?

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