Chronic pain is a continuous ailment lasting for long periods after the initial injury or disease has healed. Chronic pain is challenging
to treat and affects the daily lives of patients. Distraction therapy is a proven method of relieving patients’ discomfort by taking their
attention away from the pain. Virtual reality (VR) is a platform for distraction therapy by immersing the user in a virtual world
detached from reality. However, there is little research on how physical interactions in VR affect pain management. We present a
study to evaluate the effectiveness of physically active, mentally active, and passive interventions in VR using games with chronic
pain patients. Our results indicate that physical and mental activities in VR are equally effective at reducing pain. Furthermore, These
actively engage patients, while the effects of observing relaxing content persist outside VR. These findings can help inform the
design of future VR games targeted at chronic pain management.
Jiaheng Wang, Craig Anslow, Brian Robinson, Simon McCallum, Daniel Medeiros, and Joaquim Jorge. VR Games for Chronic Pain Management. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST), Tsukuba, Japan, 2022.
Jiaheng Wang, Craig Anslow, SimonMcCallum, and Brian Robinson. Extended Reality for Chronic Pain Relief. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Virtual Reality and Software Technology (VRST), Sydney, Australia, 2019.
