Psychiatric wards are testing a virtual reality app designed to calm patients and reduce aggressive incidents. Inpatient mental health units face high levels of stress, conflict, and a chronic lack of activities for patients. The research team previously worked with a VR company to create a hypnotherapy app that successfully reduced stress in students. This project adapts that app for psychiatric inpatients, co-designing it with patients and staff to ensure it meets their needs. The team will then pilot the app on a small group of patients, measuring whether it lowers stress and is acceptable to use on the ward. They will also interview patients and staff to determine the best way to deliver the app in a busy clinical setting. If the pilot shows promise, the goal is to run a larger trial across multiple wards to see if the VR app can reduce the number of incidents. Success could give psychiatric wards a simple, drug-free tool to de-escalate tension and improve the daily experience for both patients and staff, with potential for use in acute wards nationally and internationally.
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This project involves the codesign of a virtual reality (VR) app for use in patients on psychiatric wards. Inpatient mental health services are in crisis, with high levels of aggression, incidents and a lack of activities. There is evidence that VR can be used in patients with mental health problems and that using VR on inpatient wards may reduce the number of incidents. The team have worked before in collaboration with a VR company, Phase Space, to create a hypnotherapy VR app aimed to help student stress which has been evaluated with very positive results. The aim of this project is to codesign an app, based on the student one, aimed to reduce stress for inpatients on psychiatric wards. The objectives are to establish whether the new app is acceptable to patients, whether it reduces stress levels and to establish, from interviews with patients, staff and observation, the best model to use the app in this setting. The project has two phases. The first is to work with the company and patients to codesign the app. The second phase is to pilot the new app on a group of patients to establish if it is helpful and to establish the best way to deliver it. We hope this trial would lead on to a larger trial of the app across inpatient wards to see if there is a reduction in incidents. We want to be able to use the app in acute psychiatry wards nationally and internationally and potentially use it in other settings.
Aileen O'Brien (Principal Investigator)Asanga Fernando (Co-Investigator)Darren Bell (Co-Investigator)Isabel Mark (Co-Investigator)Trudi Edgington (Co-Investigator)Zaynah Shehraz (Co-Investigator)
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