Team

Dr. Alissa N. Antle (PI, co-lead)
Dr. Alexandra Kitson (co-lead)
Petr Slovak (UK Research Innovation Future Leaders Fellow, Kings College London, UK)
Dr. Katherine Isbister (UCSC, USA)

Graduate students:
Ashu Adhikari
Sadhbh Kenny
Annemiek Veldhuis
Priscilla Lo

Undergraduate students:
Artun Cimensel
John Ordoyo
Kenneth Karthik
Melissa Chan
Madison Gara

Learn more here

Project Summary

The VR Youth mental health project involves the creation of new co-design methods for involving youth, therapists and teachers in research creation of VR prototypes. The end goal is to investigate how VR can be used by youth for emotion regulation skills training in their everyday lives, homes and schools.

Research Objectives

Investigate how to use emotion regulation theories combined with youth-centric therapeutic practices to co-design, develop, deploy, and evaluate a series of virtual reality mental health interventions to support the development of youth emotion regulation skills and cognitive reappraisal training. The project is committed to the inclusion of input from diverse youth and their local communities throughout the research process.

Social Impact Goals

Develop new co-design methods to involve therapists, teachers and youth in a research and design process to develop, deploy and evaluate a series of VR mental health interventions for youth. Co-design methods combine embodied design approaches with ethical sensitivities and critical theory (e.g. query theory) to support diverse youth to have agency and control in the technologies that impact their mental health.

Keywords

Virtual reality, emotion regulation, cognitive reappraisal, co-design, mental health intervention, youth.

Technology

Meta Quest 2 VR Headsets, Unity Virtual Reality prototyping environment.

Community Partners

Ms. Leslie Chesick (registered therapist, UBC student services), Ms. Joia D’Aurora, Ms. Ashley Anderson, Ms. Sian Oliver, Mr. Danny Laufer and grade 10 class (Windsor Secondary School North Vancouver, Canada); Mr. Bill Zhao and DM Summer Teen VR Program (Vancouver, Canada); Ms. Laurie Brazzill and senior theatre class (Kwantlen Park Secondary, Surrey, Canada).

Funders

NSERC Discovery Grant (Antle), NSERC Post-doctoral Fellowship (Kitson), UKRI (Slovak).