The Island of Pain: A Virtual Reality Experience for Patients with Chronic Pain

Abstract

Millions of people around the world suffer from chronic pain. Chronic pain can be managed with drugs or psychological techniques. However, drugs have side effects and psychological treatment is expensive. In our Virtual Reality experience patients learn how to manage their pain by following voice-over instructions of a clinical psychologist and through interaction with a virtual pain character. This Virtual Reality experience mimics one of the sessions from a psychological intervention tailored for chronic pain sufferers. The objective of our work is to develop a self-contained training program that would supplement the clinical psychologist and would be more entertaining, scalable and accessible than traditional therapy.