23694: Investigating the Prophylactic Use of Immersive Mental Health Applications to Support Well-Being

Mental health challenges are a global issue, placing immense pressure on individuals, organizations, and economies. Immersive applications for meditation, accessed through Virtual Reality (VR), have demonstrated significant potential to prophylactically enhance mental well-being at scale. Despite this promise, there remains limited knowledge about the design elements that maximize the effectiveness and adoption of these immersive interventions. This study addresses this gap by employing a multi-method approach. We collected daily diary entries from 30 individuals who meditated in VR environments for seven days, conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with developers of immersive mental health applications, and ran a discrete choice experiment with 150 VR meditation users to examine how design features affect user behavior. Our findings identify three critical design dimensions: realism of the meditation environment, active guidance using synchronized auditory and visual cues, and customizability of the experience. These features significantly shape user satisfaction, motivations, and intentions to adopt immersive meditation applications. The study offers three key contributions. First, it advances theories on immersive application design by identifying the essential elements that drive user engagement and success in mental health contexts. Second, it provides empirical evidence on how these features influence behavioral drivers, such as usage desire and purchasing intention, offering practical insights for developers. Third, it underscores the importance of early-stage prophylactic measures, illustrating how immersive meditation can reduce stress and build resilience in both personal and organizational settings. By integrating user and expert perspectives, this study delivers actionable recommendations for advancing digital mental health interventions in practice and research.

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