Papers of the Week

Virtual reality (VR) interventions have demonstrated efficacy for more than a decade for mood and anxiety disorders and emerging evidence suggests they can reduce pain symptoms in both acute and chronic pain. More recently, these interventions have abounded within the commercial and academic sectors, immersing participants within a virtual environment to confer health benefits to users. VR immersion can facilitate the delivery of health interventions by isolating participants from distractors and stressors in a therapeutic environment. While recent studies of VR interventions have exploded, they are not uniform in approach or device type, limiting generalizability. Recent scoping reviews on VR and chronic pain have focused on specific diseases or limited inquiries to specific interventions or study types.