Project Director

Sartipi, Mina

Department Examiner

Howell, Roland; Shelton, Jill T.

Department

Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Mental health issues have become increasingly important in today's society. With that being said, researchers and consumers are looking for new ways to manage and treat mental health using new technologies in labs and the consumer space. This innovation has led to the presence of mobile self-help mental health applications, applications for peoples’ phones that are used to manage symptoms of mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, track goals, meditate, and more. However, mobile mental health applications, and mobile applications in general, have a problem concerning user satisfaction and overall user retention – studies have shown that 95% of mobile apps downloaded are abandoned by users within a month (Gu et al., 2022). Virtual reality is a relatively new and blossoming technology that provides the illusion of being physically present in virtual environments, opening an entirely new realm of possibilities across many industries. Virtual reality has already been shown to be effective in treating mental health due to its immersive nature, yet few applications exist for mental health self-help in VR. This thesis aims to answer the question of whether an immersive VR application for consumer VR systems, such as the Meta Quest 2, can have a positive effect on user satisfaction and potential user retention when compared to mobile applications.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my thesis director Dr. Mina Sartipi for directing this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Jill Shelton and Professor Roland Howell for being a part of my thesis committee and helping significantly with the design of the virtual reality application and the testing process.

IRB Number

22-097

Degree

B. A.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Date

12-2022

Subject

Virtual reality in medicine; Mobile apps; Mental health services

Keyword

virtual; reality; mental; health; mobile; application

Discipline

Other Computer Engineering

Document Type

Theses

Extent

37 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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