Comparative Analysis of Immersive Environmental Familiarity on Depression Mitigation

Overview

Post-operative depression remains a major barrier to recovery, while few tools enable the investigation of exactly how specific environmental features influence mood in controlled settings. This work presents Redove: a virtual reality platform that reconstructs everyday and uncommon environments with high fidelity, classifying them along an ordinariness-uniqueness scale derived from Central Place Theory. Each environment is assigned a global uniqueness score based on the population threshold needed to support its real-world counterpart. In a non-clinical trial, participants explored these environments while the Patient Health Questionnaire PHQ-9 captured changes in depressive symptomatology before and after immersion. Unique environments produced greater mood improvements than ordinary ones, with the magnitude of improvement increasing as scenes became less common. Gains rose steadily to a breaking point beyond which scenes reached a high level of uniqueness; thereafter, improvements plateaued. These results demonstrate that environmental novelty has a measurably positive influence on emotional state and provide a foundation for VR therapies targeting post-operative depressive risk. Ongoing development is focused on increasing the number and diversity of environments to enhance the precision of measurement and prepare the system for a formal, board-reviewed clinical study.

Competition history

• AJAS 2026 Category not listed

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