JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Emerging research has highlighted the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) as a tool for training healthcare students and professionals in care skills for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). However, there is limited research on the use of VR to engage the general public in raising awareness about ADRD.

Objective:

This research aimed to examine the impact of the VR video A Walk-Through Dementia on YouTube users by analyzing their posts.

Methods:

We collected 12,754 comments from the VR video A Walk-Through Dementia, which simulates the everyday challenges faced by individuals with ADRD, providing viewers with an immersive experience of the condition. Topic modeling was conducted to gauge viewer opinions and reactions to the videos. A pre-trained BERT model was used to transform the YouTube comments into high-dimensional vector embeddings, allowing for systematic identification and detailed analysis of the principal topics and their thematic structures within the dataset.

Results:

Our analysis identified five distinct topics. The predominant topic, represented in 2,917 comments, centered on users' personal experiences with the impact of ADRD on patients and caregivers. The remaining topics were categorized into four main areas: positive reactions to the VR videos, challenges faced by individuals with ADRD, the role of caregivers, and learning from the VR videos.

Conclusions:

Using topic modeling, this study demonstrated that VR applications serve as engaging and experiential learning tools, offering the public a deeper understanding of life with ADRD. Future research should explore additional VR applications on social media, as they hold the potential to reach wider audiences and effectively disseminate knowledge about ADRD. Clinical Trial: NONE