Virtual reality therapy takes greenspace to older nursing home residents : a pilot study
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Abstract
Older nursing home (NH) residents receiving antidepressant, anxiolytic, or sedative-hypnotic medications for depression or anxiety are at increased risk of falling, sustaining injury, social isolation, and dying. Virtual reality (VR) therapy may provide a safe alternative or adjunct to the traditional pharmacological approach for managing depressive and anxiety symptoms, but the use of VR technology has not been studied in the NH setting. Preliminary work for this study indicated that a fully immersive VR intervention was feasible in a similar population and identified barriers that might hinder success in a subsequent trial. Two main barriers identified were usability of the head-mounted display system and content within the VR application. Modifications were made to the intervention with the intent of reducing or eliminating these problems. For this study, a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design was used to pilot test ViRT-Ta-GO: Virtual Reality Therapy Takes Greenspace to Older NH residents on depressive and anxiety symptoms. Findings demonstrate the usefulness of the intervention within the NH population, suggesting that it will be advantageous to evaluate the application of ViRT-Ta-GO through controlled clinical trials.
Table of Contents
DOI
PubMed ID
Degree
Ph. D.
Thesis Department
Rights
OpenAccess.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Copyright held by author.