On this blog, I have often written about Endgame, the popular, long-running talk show based in VRChat (here, here, here, and here).
Well. this coming Saturday, March 21st, 2020, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Endgame is hosting a special episode, titled Coping with COVID-19: Dealing with the Stress of a Pandemic:
Join us for a special Endgame episode in VRChat on Saturday: we’ll facilitate a support group to discuss how we can cope with COVID-19. It’s stressful to be isolated, but we can come together in social VR to navigate this pandemic. Saturday 3/21 at 11:00 a.m. PST @PsychNoah
PsychNoah is, of course, Noah Robinson (a.k.a. Psych; Twitter; LinkedIn), a clinical psychology doctoral student at Vanderbilt University and the founder and CEO of Very Real Help, and one of the three regular hosts of the Endgame talk show in VRChat, along with Nomono and Poplopo.
Given how I have been struggling with both anxiety and depression during the coronavirus pandemic, I do intend to be in the studio audience for what promises to be a fascinating, wide-ranging, and educational discussion. Although users are urged to ask questions, you can also just sit back, watch, and listen, and enjoy something that is becoming ever rarer in the real world—being part of a crowd!
I know that I am not alone in struggling with anxiety and depression during the recent deluge of bad news relating to the coronavirus pandemic (see here and here for a couple of recent blogposts I have written). As a librarian, I wanted to share with you some information resources that you might also find helpful as you try to cope with this unprecedented public health crisis as it unfolds.
Today’s episode of Live Today from the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva featured a detailed question and answer session with mental health expert Dr. Aiysha Malik. I very strongly recommend you watch the entire video, even if you are not depressed or anxious; Aiysha is a very knowledgeable and calming speaker on the topic, and answers many mental-health-related questions submitted by viewers, some of which you may also have.
Other useful information resources I have found are:
Older adults, care providers and people with underlying health conditions
People in isolation
UPDATE March 22nd, 2020: Librarianship.ca (a news website for librarians) has compiled an outstanding list of Canadian resources: COVID-19: Mental Health Resources, including a breakdown of local resources by province and territory.
UPDATE April 7th, 2020: Here’s a very good three-minute YouTube video by Inspired Living Medical, that covers seven tips for effective mental health self-care during the coronavirus pandemic:
I will continue to add new resources to this list as I encounter them—and trust me, I am quite regularly scouring the coronavirus news feeds these days!
When you absolutely need someone to talk to online, one of the best places to try is The KindVoice subReddit and Discord channel, both of which are staffed by volunteers:
“Sometimes we need to hear a human voice on the other end of the line telling us that everything’s going to be ok. This subreddit is for people that aren’t in a suicidal crisis, but feel depressed, alone, or want someone to talk to.”
A similar service is called The Haven, another Discord channel for people who need someone to talk to. Both Kind Voice and The Haven are free, volunteer-run services.
Lucas Rizzotto, who is the founder and CEO of the VR experience Where Thoughts Go (available on Steam and the Oculus Store), has posted a thread of tweets on Twitter, suggesting that the “power users” of social VR are those who suffer from a mental or physical illness that prevents them from participating fully in real-life society:
Lucas says:
I don’t know if people know this, but the power users of social VR right now are kids and people who suffer from a mental/physical illness that stops them from socializing normally in their day-to-day life. Social VR is what gives them control over their social life.
By “power users”, I mean the people that spend the most amount of hours in-app, which are the users that are theoretically gaining the most from a product. Exceptions may apply, but it still doesn’t change the overwhelming majority.
This tells us something REALLY important: people use social VR to fill GAPS missing from their real-life interactions, not to REPLACE them. The more similar social VR interactions are to the real-world the less use they have to the general population. It fills less gaps!
And it makes sense! Social VR fills very important gaps for those 2 groups. Kids have a social life heavily constrained by their families & educational institutions, while people who suffer from certain illnesses may be stuck at home or too anxious to engage normally with others.
What this means is that the idea that the everyday men and women will simply stop hanging out in real life and just do it in VR instead is delusional. There are so many hidden nuances about in-person interactions that people won’t give up, even if they cannot verbalize them.
So the question becomes: when are people willing to give those things up?
1) When it’s overwhelmingly economically advantageous to meet in VR (i.e. you don’t have to fly somewhere)
2) When the social gathering is more about acquiring information than connecting at a human level
So if you’re a designing a social XR product, ask yourself: are you filling a gap in people’s social lives or are you just giving them another way to do what they do today? And if that’s so, are the economic benefits enough to justify them giving up the nuances of meeting in real life?
Now, the idea that social VR/virtual worlds are a haven of sorts for those with disabilities or illnesses is not exactly a new concept. In fact, Brenhard Drax (a.k.a. Second Life and Sansar videomaker Draxtor Despres) has made an award-winning documentary about this topic, called Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is Me, which you can watch below:
Lucas Rizzottos’ premise is rather intriguing. But I don’t agree with Lucas’ proposal that social VR’s power users are mostly people who do have a disability or illness of some sort. While I agree that the overall percentage of the disabled or physically/mentally ill participating in social VR/virtual worlds is certainly higher than what you would find in real-life society, it is still a clear minority of social VR users.
Most of the people who use social VR are mentally and physically healthy, non-disabled people who choose to spend a certain portion of the day inside a VR headset! They do so for a variety of reasons, not necessarily that they don’t have real-life options.
That is not to say that the differently abled, and those who have a mental or physical illness, aren’t attracted to social VR and virtual worlds. I can think of numerous examples of people I have met in Sansar, such as Shyla the Super Gecko (who is profiled in Drax’s documentary above), who successfully use Sansar as a social outlet. And I myself have shared on this blog about my struggles with severe clinical depression, so even I would fit into Lucas’ thesis. I admit that there have been days in the past, when I was depressed, when I would rather slip on my Oculus Rift headset and be social in a virtual world than go outside in the real one. And I found that the mood lift I would get from being social in VR was similar to the one I would get in real life, too.
What do you think? Do you agree with Lucas Rizzotto that social VR’s power users are those with mental or physical illnesses, or not? Please feel free to leave a comment below, or even better, join us on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server and tell us what you think there! We’d love to have you.
“Collectively, the world is more stressed, worried, sad and in pain today than we’ve ever seen it,” Gallup’s managing editor, Mohamed S. Younis, said in a letter in the report.
…
“Globally there’s upheaval,” Molitor says. There’s migration crises (“and a lot of suffering involved in that,” she says), instability in government (with Brexit happening in Europe, infighting in the U.S., unrest in Turkey, crises in Yemen, and many other places), and dire climate warnings.
There’s a lot of uncertainty, which drives stress, worry, and all of the emotions that go along with that, she says. “And whether you’re politically aware of it or not, it’s kind of in the zeitgeist.”
Molitor says her patients (who are notably in most part middle and upper middle class individuals) are feeling very anxious, overwhelmed and helpless. “They are feeling under siege,” she says.
I’m not surprised. Frankly, I have been feeling a lot more stressed out, afraid, and angry than usual lately, and I know many of you feel the same. Is it just me, or is the world getting even crazier? It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even want to check the news anymore. And don’t even get me started about Donald Trump…
Protester’s sign during Trump’s recent visit to the U.K.
Here are a few suggestions on how to cope in crazy, stressful times from the article:
Get involved: Find a cause related to what’s driving your stress and unease and give back.
Get educated: Particularly when it comes to the divisiveness that’s becoming synonymous with politics in the U.S. and elsewhere, be curious about others’ opinions rather than judging them immediately.
Be grateful: Have gratitude for what you do have in your life and the things that you can count on — like the people you love and those who love you.
Focus on what you can do: You’re certainly not going to be able to change everything that bothers you, but you likely can change some of it. Ask yourself what things can you do to feel more hopeful every day, and do them. (That doesn’t mean you get to completely ignore the negative things that happen in life, but you don’t need to dwell on them all the time.)
Take care of you: Doing things like sleeping well, eating well, moving (it doesn’t have to be going to the gym), laughing and doing your laundry — taking care of your basic needs — these acts go a long way in helping you feel more in control and better able to deal with whatever challenges land on your plate.
Make time for the people you care about: Social support is one of the number one ways to boost resiliency. Scores of research show being lonely worsens stress and worsens health outcomes, while being with and relating to others boosts positive emotions.
Pay attention to what’s pushing your buttons: A big part of not letting those negative emotions getting the best of us is knowing what’s causing those negative feelings to begin with. If Twitter wars put you on edge, limit how much of that you take in, when you read it or whose rants you read.
Personally, I think it’s time I took an extended Trump news break…for my own sanity.
On a somewhat funnier note, my newly-created Donald Trump avatar has already been banned from his first sim in Second Life: the hellfire and eternal torment experience run by the Demon’s Forest group. It would appear that even Hell doesn’t want Donald hanging around!
Devil horns, tail, and pitchfork:free gift by ~T&S~ from the SL Marketplace. All items are copy and modify (I needed to adjust the horns to fit the mesh head properly).
Red hellfire steam rising from his feet:free gift from <SIC> from the SL Marketplace
