Patient experience of a virtual reality calm room in a psychiatric inpatient care setting in Sweden: a qualitative study with inpatients

Abstract

Objective Calm rooms have been developed and implemented in psychiatric inpatient care settings to offer patients a dedicated space for relaxation in a convenient and safe environment. Recent technology developments have enabled virtual reality (VR) equivalents of calm rooms that can be feasibly deployed in psychiatric care settings. While research has shown VR environments to be efficacious in inducing relaxation, little is known how these virtual calm rooms are perceived by patients. The aim of this study was to elucidate patient experiences of using a VR calm room in a psychiatric inpatient setting.Design Qualitative interview study. Semi-structured interviews were analysed using qualitive inductive content analysis, which focuses on the interpretation of texts for making replicable and valid inferences.Setting Swedish hospital psychiatric inpatient care setting with a wireless, three degrees-of-freedom VR head-mounted display running a calm room application simulating nature environment.Participants 20 adult patients (12 women) with bipolar disorder (n=18) or unipolar depression (n=2).Results Participants experienced the use of the VR calm room as having a positive impact on them, inducing awareness, calmness and well-being. They were thankful to be offered a non-pharmacological alternative for anxiety relief. Participants also expressed that they had some concerns about how they would react emotionally before using the VR device. However, after use, they highlighted that their overall experience was positive. They also expressed that they could see potential for further development of VR technology in psychiatric care.Conclusions VR technology has the potential to solve pressing logistic issues in offering calm rooms in psychiatric inpatient care. VR calm rooms appear to be appreciated by psychiatric inpatients, who value their accessibility, convenience and variety of modalities offered. Participants perceived an increase in their well-being after use.