Hōm VR

For thousands of years, Persian, Native American, Mexican, and Australian Aboriginal people (and so many other cultures) used the power of campfire storytelling as a way to deal with mental health issues. Stories can nurture empathy and connectedness. Sharing stories can give us the courage and empower us to honour our own and other’s personal experiences. Our family and community stories shape our beliefs and identities. When we put ourselves into a story, it becomes experience and learning follows experience. We recognise the spirit of stories that teach us throughout the course of our lifetime. The learning journey that each of us travels to arrive at an awareness of our strengths is largely the result of our learning spirit being invigorated, nourished, challenged and motivated by encounters between our own story and those of significant others.
Hōm VR is a multiplayer immersive Virtual Reality (VR) storytelling environment to be used by mental health professionals for group therapy. Hōm VR provides a multiplayer VR environment that storytellers gather participants around the fire to tell stories about their experiences. Participants have the choice to leave their stories recorded to be used by others to create empathy.
Various people will benefit from Hōm VR including but not limited to people with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the Aboriginal community, sexual assault victims, domestic violence victims, elderly people and people with PTSD.
Compare to solutions offered by telehealth which usually rely on videoconferencing software such as Skype, Hōm VR provides an opportunity of an immersive experience.

Do you like to demo Hōm VR today?

What they tell about us?

It’s clear you’re excited about the Hōm VR project. I want to congratulate you on all of the hard work you and your team put in over the past few months. I have to say I’m really impressed with this project. I felt that I am really somewhere else! The VR content is amazingly built into the project, and I think individuals can be safely immersed in different locations within the virtual scenario. I believe that several strengths are noteworthy for this project. First, this project has the potential to increase attractive treatment options for individuals compared to traditional consultation therapy (which could increase treatment acceptability). Second, this VR project may increase access to care and may provide relief to its users. Further, it looks like this project can benefit from the therapeutic approach of outdoor therapy or nature-based interventions in the virtual environment. It seems to me that the project attempts to create virtually outdoor therapy for service users and clinicians. In addition, it can provide initial support for the safe application of VR therapy for other similar projects in WA. The feasibility study of the project certainly needs to be tested. However, I believe that it can be safely implemented, and individuals would accept this approach like traditional consultation therapy.
Dr. Ashkan Ilami
General Practitioner, qualified Sexologist