Lee Kunho
Department of Counseling Psychology, College of Health and Welfare, Sahmyook University, Seoul 01795, Republic of Korea.
Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Sep 7;11(18):2490. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11182490.
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the interest in and demand for online platforms that can replace traditional face-to-face activities. Accordingly, metaverses have been increasingly used across society, especially in the Mental health field. This broad use of metaverses is now recognized as a major trend that will drive various industries across healthcare and society. In response to this societal change, this study provides a theoretical framework for understanding and applying metaverses as therapeutic spaces in mental health fields through a conceptualization and characterization of metaverses for a range of technologies and services. The value of metaverses as a human-centered "field of experience" was identified and proposed based on the essential aspect of the user, the human being, rather than from the technology used. According to existing psychotherapeutic theories, four therapeutic concepts for the metaverse were proposed: metaverse as an "average expectable environment" in the developmental and therapeutic categories of the self, a transitional stage for adaptation to reality, a creative space for memory and communication for the self, and an expanded or "surplus" reality. This work is expected to be a useful basis for expanding new psychotherapeutic strategies and methods as therapeutic spaces for maintaining mental health through the metaverse.
新冠疫情引发了人们对能够取代传统面对面活动的在线平台的兴趣和需求。因此，元宇宙在社会中得到了越来越广泛的应用，尤其是在心理健康领域。元宇宙的这种广泛应用如今被视为将推动医疗保健和整个社会各行业发展的一个主要趋势。针对这一社会变革，本研究通过对一系列技术和服务的元宇宙进行概念化和特征描述，提供了一个理论框架，用于理解元宇宙并将其作为心理健康领域的治疗空间加以应用。元宇宙作为以人类为中心的“体验场”的价值是基于用户（即人本身）的本质方面确定并提出的，而非基于所使用的技术。根据现有的心理治疗理论，提出了元宇宙的四个治疗概念：元宇宙作为自我发展和治疗范畴中的“平均可预期环境”，适应现实的过渡阶段，自我记忆与交流的创造性空间，以及扩展的或“过剩的”现实。这项工作有望成为通过元宇宙作为维护心理健康的治疗空间来扩展新的心理治疗策略和方法的有用基础。
