Abstract
BackgroundLiving in the time of the COVID-19 means experiencing not only a global health emergency but also extreme psychological stress with potential emotional side effects such as sadness, grief, irritability, and mood swings. Crucially, lockdown and confinement measures isolate people who become the first and the only ones in charge of their own mental health: people are left alone facing a novel and potentially lethal situation, and, at the same time, they need to develop adaptive strategies to face it, at home. In this view, easy-to-use, inexpensive, and scientifically validated self-help solutions aiming to reduce the psychological burden of coronavirus are extremely necessary.AimsThis pragmatic trial aims to provide the evidence that a weekly self-help virtual reality (VR) protocol can help overcome the psychological burden of the Coronavirus by relieving anxiety, improving well-being, and reinforcing social connectedness. The protocol will be based on the “Secret Garden” 360 VR video online (www.covidfeelgood.com) which simulates a natural environment aiming to promote relaxation and self-reflection. Three hundred sixty–degree or spherical videos allow the user to control the viewing direction. In this way, the user can explore the content from any angle like a panorama and experience presence and immersion. The “Secret Garden” video is combined with daily exercises that are designed to be experienced with another person (not necessarily physically together), to facilitate a process of critical examination and eventual revision of core assumptions and beliefs related to personal identity, relationships, and goals.MethodsThis is a multicentric, pragmatic pilot randomized controlled trial involving individuals who experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and underwent a lockdown and quarantine procedures. The trial is approved by the Ethics Committee of the Istituto Auxologico Italiano. Each research group in all the countries joining the pragmatic trial, aims at enrolling at least 30 individuals in the experimental group experiencing the self-help protocol, and 30 in the control group, over a period of 3 months to verify the feasibility of the intervention.ConclusionThe goal of this protocol is for VR to become the “surgical mask” of mental health treatment. Although surgical masks do not provide the wearer with a reliable level of protection against the coronavirus compared with FFP2 or FFP3 masks, surgical masks are very effective in protecting others from the wearer’s respiratory emissions. The goal of the VR protocol is the same: not necessarily to solve complex mental health problems but rather to improve well-being and preserve social connectedness through the beneficial social effects generated by positive emotions.
Highlights
BackgroundLiving in the time of the COVID-19 means experiencing a global health emergency and extreme psychological stress that puts a strain on our identity and our relationships
Evidence has shown that quarantine causes significant psychological effects including post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion, and anger [4]
Given the mandatory loneliness resulting from lockdown measures, easy-to-use, inexpensive, and scientifically validated self-help solutions could be the key [11,12,13,14,15,16]. This pragmatic trial seeks to provide the evidence that a weekly self-help protocol based on a virtual reality experience —“The Secret Garden”, available in the www.covidfeelgood. com website—can help to overcome the psychological burden of the Coronavirus
Summary
Living in the time of the COVID-19 means experiencing a global health emergency and extreme psychological stress that puts a strain on our identity and our relationships. Without everyday places to meet at—such as the workplace and the classroom—friends and acquaintances are more difficult to reach and to interact with This weakens social bonds and declines the social significance of the local community in terms of social capital and interpersonal support. These negative psychological effects may be aggravated by other stressors such as having inadequate basic supplies (e.g., food, etc.), insufficient clear guidelines about actions to take and the prolonged duration of quarantine, the interruption of professional activities and the subsequent financial loss [4]. Given the mandatory loneliness resulting from lockdown measures, easy-to-use, inexpensive, and scientifically validated self-help solutions could be the key [11,12,13,14,15,16]
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