Reducing Stigma Against Depression: Designing and Implementing a VR-assisted Curriculum to Reduce Students' Perceptions of Patients With Depression
Overview
- Phase
- Not Applicable
- Intervention
- Not specified
- Conditions
- Control
- Sponsor
- Yale-NUS College
- Enrollment
- 200
- Locations
- 1
- Primary Endpoint
- Knowledge about depression
- Last Updated
- 7 years ago
Overview
Brief Summary
Two randomised controlled trials will be conducted to evaluate a virtual reality (VR) simulation designed to reduce stigma against depression. Qualitative interviews will also be carried out to evaluate the VR simulation.
Detailed Description
The investigators examine the impact of a VR-assisted curriculum on stigma reduction towards individuals with depression. This is done through the development and evaluation of a VR-assisted curriculum that promotes stigma reduction towards depression among tertiary-aged students. Collection of data will provide insights about the effectiveness of VR's immersive quality in enhancing stigma reduction skills through measures of attitudes, beliefs and knowledge about depression. In the first study, VR is compared with traditional pamphlets in an information sharing booth about depression. In the second study, participants attend a 30-min session where they undergo an educational curriculum with either a VR or standard video as adjunctive tools.
Investigators
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria
- •Tertiary students from NUS and Yale-NUS only
Exclusion Criteria
- •History of medical or psychiatric disorder; History of motion sickness, dizziness or epilepsy; (For reliability and safety of heart-rate monitoring) Tattoos near the wrist and/or nickel or acrylate allergies
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Knowledge about depression
Time Frame: 2 minutes
A Depression Literacy measure will be used to assess participants' understanding and knowledge of depression.
Video Enjoyment
Time Frame: 1 minute
In the VR condition, enjoyment of the VR simulation will be assessed through five items on a video enjoyment questionnaire created by the researchers, that includes items such as "I found the video interesting" and "The video made me more interested in the topic" on a visual analog scale. The scale was anchored between 0 indicating "Strongly Disagree" to 10 indicating "Strongly Agree".
Video Presence
Time Frame: 1 minute
Presence felt in the VR simulation will be assessed through four items on a video presence questionnaire, that includes items such as "How aware were you of events happening in your actual surroundings outside of the video?" and "How strong was your sense of 'being there' in the video environment?" on a visual analog scale. The questions were adapted from the original Presence Questionnaire by Witmer and Singer (1998) that outlined four sub-factors of control, sensory, distraction and realism; items in our questionnaire were carefully selected to represent all of the factors. The scale ranged from 0 indicating "Not At All" to 10 indicating "Very Much So".
Stigmatising beliefs towards depression
Time Frame: 2 minutes
The extent of agreement with negative beliefs and stereotypes about depression will be adapted from the 10-item agreement sub-scale of the Self-Stigma of Mental Illness Scale.
Stigmatising attitudes towards depression
Time Frame: 5 minutes
Stigmatising attitudes refer to the opinions that one has towards persons with depression, and how they would interact with these group of people. This will be measured using an adapted version of the Attribution Questionnaire-27.
Secondary Outcomes
- Heart rate live tracking(4 minutes)
- Qualitative feedback about VR video(10 minutes)
- Affect (PANAS)(3 minutes)