Social Simulation for Mental Health: Evaluating Contextual Environments in Augmented Reality for Training Self-Care Skills

Abstract

Stress and anxiety are common, and there is growing interest in using VR/AR for training coping skills. However, these skills are meant to be applied during real-world distress, while existing interventions largely focus on calm or abstract settings. Little is known about how simulating realistic environments affects stress responses and skill transfer. We developed an AR social simulation intervention for practicing self-care skills, and contribute a 14-day, 43-participant experiment to examine its effects versus a system without social simulation. Results showed that participants did not differ in frequency of intervention use nor self-reported stress, but those in the social simulation condition exhibited slower heart-rate rise during a speaking task, steeper rate of heart-rate decline when self-soothing, and more frequent application of skills in the real-world dependent on if opportunities arose. Our work contributes empirical understanding of realistic environments for mental health training, and implications for designing embodied interventions for self-care.