The healing potential of online virtual worlds

Abstract

This chapter describes the research being done to create a healing center for veterans of recent conflicts in the online virtual world Second Life. This work, started in 2008 and funded by the US Army's Research Office, is building a dedicated online virtual world space to provide not only social connectivity for widely dispersed veterans, but also to offer stress-reducing health care and activities, especially in the area of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The social space is populated by several intelligent agent-avatars that serve various functions. For example, there is a knowledgeable guide that can show people the various activities and spaces the site has to offer, find out and store a list of the visitors' interests, and keep a record of what they have seen and done. There are also intelligent agents who can provide guidance for certain activities such as walking a labyrinth, and a story activity called "The Warriors' Journey." Working with experts in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), we are implementing MBSR therapy in this Second Life space for veterans. These experts will run the in-world group sessions, inhabiting an avatar for this purpose. Experiments with returning veterans are planned for 2010 that will test the efficacy of such therapies deployed in the virtual world. We expect the use of virtual worlds for both group and individual therapies to increase in the future and this project is a first step in determining their viability. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.