Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Aug 25, 2023
Date Accepted: Jan 1, 2024
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A systematic review evaluating the effectiveness of virtual reality-based well-being interventions for stress reduction in young adults
ABSTRACT
Background:
Adolescents can be especially vulnerable to various stressors as they are still in their formative years and transitioning into adulthood. Hence, it is important for them to have effective stress management strategies.
Objective:
This systematic review investigates current well-being interventions that are aimed at reducing stress among young adults. In particular, interventions using the medium of virtual reality are explored.
Methods:
This mixed-methods systematic review follows the PRISMA-P guidelines and articles were gathered for the databases PsycInfo, PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, Open Grey and Edutopia. Predetermined criteria and specific keywords were used to search for the articles. Search results were screened and extracted by two independent authors. Any disagreements after reconciliation were settled by a third author. The quality and risk of bias of included studies were assessed using the GRADE Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies. Studies were analyzed qualitatively.
Results:
Among the appraised studies, the effectiveness of virtual reality-based interventions was measured in three contexts: nature, stress, and academics.
Conclusions:
Studies using virtual reality interventions, overall, promoted a reduction in stress and an increase in well-being. The findings suggest VR may serve as an accessible and affordable medium of stress reduction for students and young adults. Larger sample sizes, and a greater number of included studies, may be required in future directions.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.