Anxiety, sleep disturbance, low mood and post-traumatic stress respond to psychological therapy, but access is limited, waiting lists are long, and confronting difficult situations in the real world can feel impossible. MindRelief brings that therapy into immersive environments that patients can enter safely, at their own pace, as often as recovery requires.
What’s inside
- Graduated exposure therapy: feared situations rebuilt in VR and approached step by step, with the intensity graded to each patient. The exposure programmes were co-designed with patients and developed with NHS partners, so every scenario reflects what recovery actually feels like from the inside.
- Relaxation & CBT-based scripts: guided relaxation exercises built on cognitive-behavioural techniques, for anxiety, low mood and the racing mind that keeps sleep away.
- Mindfulness & music therapy: calm, immersive spaces for grounding and emotional regulation, usable in a ward, a clinic or at home.
Like every DancingMind programme, MindRelief uses graded difficulty: exposure begins where a patient can cope today and adds intensity only as confidence grows: resistance training for the mind, applied to recovery from distress.
Grounded in research
Our work on VR exposure therapy includes a qualitative study co-authored by DancingMind and published in Nursing in Critical Care (2024), exploring what former intensive-care patients and clinical staff see as the barriers and facilitators to implementing VR exposure therapy in ICU recovery.
See the evidence library for full context on our published research.