Are Virtual Forests Just for Relaxation, or Can They Enhance the Benefits of Therapy?

IF 2.4 4区医学 Q2 HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES

Healthcare Pub Date : 2025-03-13 DOI:10.3390/healthcare13060621

You Zhi Hu, Max Beggs, Yu Xue, Sinuo Gao, Junyoung Seok, Yawen Xiao, Ziqi Zhou, Yifei Zhou, Alex Mariakakis, Mark Chignell

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Forest bathing (Shinrin-Yoku in Japanese) is used as an intervention for improving mental health, with VR being used to create virtual forests for relaxation.

Background/objectives: In this research, we added therapeutic intent to a virtual forest with the goal of reducing social anxiety, with and without therapeutic instruction.

Methods: Fifty-eight first-year psychology students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: virtual forest only, therapeutic exercises only, and both combined.

Results: All three conditions enhanced restorative effects equally. However, only the therapeutic exercise-only condition showed a tendency to reduce social anxiety. Participants in the combined condition reported more positive experiences and showed better comprehension of therapy content in the virtual forest.

Conclusions: While the non-VR approach may offer immediate relaxation and possible anxiety reduction, combining the virtual forest with therapeutic exercises may yield better outcomes for sustained engagement and understanding over multiple therapeutic sessions.

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来源期刊

Healthcare Medicine-Health Policy

CiteScore

3.50

自引率

7.10%

发文量

审稿时长

47 days

期刊介绍： Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal (free for readers), which publishes original theoretical and empirical work in the interdisciplinary area of all aspects of medicine and health care research. Healthcare publishes Original Research Articles, Reviews, Case Reports, Research Notes and Short Communications. We encourage researchers to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. For theoretical papers, full details of proofs must be provided so that the results can be checked; for experimental papers, full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Additionally, electronic files or software regarding the full details of the calculations, experimental procedure, etc., can be deposited along with the publication as “Supplementary Material”.