VR Experience: A Day in the Life with a Chronic Illness
The Experience
This interactive VR experience is designed to allow the user a glimpse into the life of someone suffering with depression or other chronic illnesses that cause fatigue. Spoon Theory is a commonly used metaphor to describe how energy is spent over time by those with chronic illnesses; if you wake up in possession of five spoons and ‘spend’ two of them in order to have a shower then you only have three spoons left to last you the rest of the day. This experience plays with spoon theory (in the form of a videogame-style energy bar) as a way to show the user how frustrating it can be to live with low energy levels. The user goes about their day losing and gaining energy upon doing different tasks and sees how truly debilitating depression and comparable illnesses can be.
The experience starts in a bedroom with the avatar waking up and an energy bar, a health bar, hunger and thirst bars visible in the corner of the ‘screen’. These bars go up or down depending on the actions the user takes: e.g. cooking makes the energy bar go down but eating makes the energy bar go up.
Once the user has graduated from the one-day ‘tutorial’ which provides vague prompts on how to progress throughout the day, they can enter an endless mode which introduces a stress bar as well as random events (such as nightmares) which affect the overall health of the avatar.
According to Statista (2023) 22.2% of respondents in a US survey reported symptoms of depression within the last two weeks (data taken from Jan 4th- 16th 2023) this works out as around 1 in 5 adults having depression and this was even higher during the Covid-19 pandemic. As 1 in 5 adults experience depression, understanding it should be given more consideration; 4 in 5 people have not experienced depression. This is where VR comes in, allowing people to experience just a small part of what living with depression is truly like. Whilst there is no way to replicate some of its symptoms such as intrusive thoughts – something I would not wish on anyone anyway – this experience enables the user to see the frustrating side of depression, the parts of their life they take for granted and hopefully make it easier for them to empathise with people who do suffer from depression or other chronic illnesses.
For this reason, this experience would be aimed primarily at therapist’s offices in order for it to be made available to relations of those suffering with depression so that they can educate themselves on what depression can feel like and better empathise with their loved ones. It would also be made publicly available so that anyone may use it to educate themselves on the subject.
This experience is made purely for educational purposes and is not meant to be entertaining as it is a representation of a serious mental health condition. Bearing in mind the severity of this condition and the aim to increase awareness and educate the public about it, all proceeds from this VR will go towards Mind and other charities which support those with bad mental health and their families.
Why is this experience best suited to VR?
There is no other form which allows you to artificially experience the frustrations of depression first-hand to this level. By using a form which can introduce a visual energy bar, people are forced to wait until they have enough energy in order to do certain tasks. The only other form which allows this is a handheld gaming system, however with this the user is able to put down the controller; do something else for a while; and then come back to a full energy bar – unfortunately no such cheat code is available in real life and as such the VR experience must mimic this as closely as possible in order to truly get its point across.
With this in mind, the graphics for the experience would be as realistic as possible with only ambient sounds in the background. A voice over would be introduced mimicking the avatar’s internal thoughts if the user makes no movement for a while. For example, when the hunger bar gets low the voice might say “hmm, when was the last time I ate?” in order to prompt the user to go and cook.
Whilst VR is most associated with games it is also extremely useful for education purposes as it fully immerses the user into a setting.
References:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1132438/depressive-symptoms-us-adults-in-last-week/?locale=en
Written by Stephanie Trevena
Edited by Maddy Turnball