Practicing Stress Relief for the Everyday: Designing Social Simulation Using VR, AR, and LLMs

TL;DR

This paper investigates using VR, AR, and LLMs to create social simulations that help individuals practice stress relief techniques in realistic virtual environments, addressing gaps in accessible mental health support.

Contribution

It introduces eight interactive prototypes for stress management scenarios using immersive technologies and provides insights into their effectiveness and future development considerations.

Findings

People lack effective self-support tools for everyday stress.

Social simulation can effectively train mental health practices.

Key considerations include realism risks and accessibility challenges.

Abstract

Stress is an inevitable part of day-to-day life yet many find themselves unable to manage it themselves, particularly when professional or peer support are not always readily available. As self-care becomes increasingly vital for mental well-being, this paper explores the potential of social simulation as a safe, virtual environment for practicing stress relief for everyday situations. Leveraging the immersive capabilities of VR, AR, and LLMs, we developed eight interactive prototypes for various everyday stressful scenarios (e.g. public speaking) then conducted prototype-driven semi-structured interviews with 19 participants. We reveal that people currently lack effective means to support themselves through everyday stress and found that social simulation fills a gap for simulating real environments for training mental health practices. We outline key considerations for future development of simulation for self-care, including risks of trauma from hyper-realism, distrust of LLM-recommended timing for mental health recommendations, and the value of accessibility for self-care interventions.