BehaVR

Stress & Anxiety

Stress & Anxiety

Our CEO joined Beth BierBower on the B-Time Podcast to discuss the digital therapeutics segment, promising innovations, and the unique opportunity for VR in therapeutic interventions.

The Pandemic Within the Pandemic: College Students Are Experiencing Unprecedented Rates of Social Anxiety

“Tag.”

“You’re it!”

“No, I’m not. I’m on base!” 

Ahhh, remember the sound of children playing outside, interacting with one another, arguing and resolving their differences, but ending the day happy and, more importantly, still friends? It may seem like a trivial, or even curmudgeonly observation to make, but as I spend my days exploring the increasing anxiety and depression that our youth are experiencing, I can’t help but wonder if they aren’t trivial after all.

These interactions are powerful (some studies have actually made a connection between social isolation and heightened stress responses that can lead to chronic disease in adulthood), but it seems like with each generation we’ve further deemphasized the value of social interactions for kids. They have gone from knocking on their neighbor’s door, to interacting with the parents to ask their friends to play, to telephone calls that mirrored that interaction, to texts directly to the friends, to a world where the kids can simply connect virtually and not even need to “get together” to interact.

College Administrators Are Calling this the Pandemic within the Pandemic

In doing some market research, I have spoken with a dozen or so universities in the past week, and a theme that I heard when discussing the mental health of students on campus is, “we’re dealing with a pandemic inside the pandemic.” In other words, adminstrators are finding that college-aged students have a social ineptitude, and resulting anxiety, that is paired with a need for interaction, which unfortunately has been stifled in these pandemic times.

Even before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic there was research documenting an increase in social anxiety in young people which makes me wonder – why is this generation experiencing their university years in a vastly different way than those of us who trudged across campus decades ago? What is different about their experience? What has made them more socially anxious? Pointing to social media may seem like low-hanging fruit (with the ongoing backlash and criticism)  but could the rise in social media during this generation’s childhood have altered their social habits enough to impact their mental health? Some studies say yes.

To further support the notion that live social interaction plays a role on our mental health, there’s been anecdotal observations on campus that young adults who are socially involved (like college athletes or those heavily involved in clubs) seem to have fared better through the COVID-19 pandemic. Student athletes have stayed connected, they have learned and relearned how to support themselves and others. On the other hand, students who have to spend their time at work, in fields like hospitality, distribution centers, etc. to support themselves, have had their interactions and responsibilities disrupted and their experience has been woefully different. They’ve lost social interaction, resorted to receiving assistance and now have to make a choice of whether to keep receiving that assistance or go back to work. This has been a tough decision which has impacted their mental health in ways that others, like the student athletes, haven’t experienced.

We Need to Give College Students the Tools to Learn Resiliency

While social interaction seems to play a foundational role in the mental state of our youth, we can’t lose sight of the value of teaching resilience and ensuring that our rising generations have the tools and resources required to manage through unforeseen circumstances, like the pandemic we have all recently endured. It’s undeniable that we have a problem. Our students are frustrated with the challenges they are experiencing and the lack of support to resolve it. Administrators are concerned and searching for ways to support their student population. Alumni are worried about the reputations of their universities. Fortunately, the pandemic has shone a light on this issue, forcing universities to explore a number of resources, like:

  • Creating specific committees focused on mental health.
  • Incorporating wellbeing into the broader student needs. You might see things around campus like meditation rooms and pop-ups focused on sleep practices and self-care.
  • Offering mental health education at orientation alongside alcohol and drug awareness programs.
  • Providing digital tools and resources to supplement the Counseling and Psychological Services.

But we can’t place all of the responsibility on the universities to solve this social ineptitude and mental health pandemic. They will be a great driver of change for those who are already facing this condition. But how can we reduce the prevalence of social anxieties and prevent these challenges our university students face when exposed to significant life changes?

We all have a social responsibility to support our youth and prepare them for the future. I challenge every tech company to think about the ramifications of their products. I challenge every political leader to think about how we incorporate social skills into K-12 learning. I challenge communities to think about ways to get children back together. And I challenge you to think about your own conversations. Are you promoting a culture of social interaction and engagement, or has this “pandemic within the pandemic” stricken you too?

BehaVR is Headed to HLTH 2021 (with some exciting news)!

BehaVR is headed to HLTH 2021, and we couldn’t be more excited! This marks the second year that we’ve been able to attend this conference – an event where industry stakeholders come together to share insights and trends from across the health ecosystem.

HLTH 2019 was such a great experience for us – many new connections and opportunities were made. Since that event, the team has made incredible strides in bringing to market innovative solutions to address the chronic health challenges faced by so many; among those solutions are Pain Neuroscience+ for sufferers of chronic pain, and NurtureVR, a maternal health and wellness program designed to support expectant moms and their families through their pregnancy journey.

This year, we will be attending HLTH 2021 with two goals: the first, to continue to forge connections with key innovators in the healthcare space, and the second, to share our vision of how we can achieve our company’s goal of liberating all populations from stress, anxiety and fear, regardless of access. Achieving this goal has been our mission from BehaVR’s inception, and has helped to guide us in the creation of our core programs to date.

That goal continues to be the driving force for us, especially as we enter a new phase at BehaVR – the details which will be announced in full at HLTH 2021. It is indeed an exciting phase, with the potential to have tremendous impact on the daily lives of people suffering from anxiety and depression. Until then, we’ll leave you with this video from HLTH 2019, where I spoke about the potential of Digital Therapeutics for Behavioral Health.

See you in Boston!

A Student’s Perspective on the Mental Health Crisis Facing College Students

College students, already facing challenges as they navigate new environments, face even greater challenges during the COVID pandemic.

*Elsa Romero, BehaVR’s incredibly talented graphic design intern, is a senior at Wheaton College, a small liberal arts college located in Wheaton, Illinois. In observance of Mental Health Awareness Week, we’ve asked her to share what it’s like being a student in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the course of my three almost four years in college there is not a day that goes by that I don’t have to  remind myself why I am in college and why I should stay in college. Whether it is the stress of classes, the worries about how to pay for tuition this month, or the anxiety of attending college during a pandemic, there’s rarely a day that I don’t question why I chose to attend college. There are times when I am doing too much and just cannot physically or mentally function anymore. I jokingly said to my roommate a few days ago that the first thing I think about when I wake up is when I can go back to sleep. But honestly, after talking to my friends and peers here at school and reflecting on mental health awareness week, I think this really highlights the mental health crisis affecting college students now. We are worn out, point blank, period. Worn out physically and mentally. 

As a senior in college, I have gone through my fair share of the ups and downs of college life. There are so many things about going to college and starting this transition into adulthood and independence that can be overwhelming, both mentally and physically. When I was in high school, I at least had family and friends that I knew and grew up with for support. But college is a whole new ballgame that, frankly for a lot of students including myself, can be overwhelming and very impactful, sometimes negatively, on mental health

Going to college is such a new experience, one in which you are very much just thrown into the deep end of life. There was a lot that I had to navigate: making friends, figuring out how to pay for tuition, keeping up my grades, feeding myself, choosing the “right” career, and unfortunately taking care of myself and my mental health was often left at the bottom of the list, right next to sleep. For me and a lot of people I know, this imbalance between a social life, school, work and mental health can go on for only so long before you crash and burn. I have experienced this crash and burn many times in my college career, and while I wish I could say that I have experienced it less as my college years have gone on, I sadly cannot. It has become pretty normal for me to ask my friends and peers how they are doing and to hear replies like “not great,” “I feel so overwhelmed,” “I only slept two hours last night,” “I’m really tired,” “I’ve been having anxiety attacks all day.” And honestly I have also replied similarly to the same question being asked of me. 

Speaking for myself and my peers, I can honestly say that we are not doing well. We are constantly doing so much that we barely have time to give our bodies what they need to keep going, let alone think about our mental health status. I have to set constant reminders to go to bed before 12am, to eat three meals a day and to regularly drink water and I even know a few people who have to set an alarm for a restroom break. What I think has happened is that we’ve ended up putting our mental health and physical health at risk for the sake of academia and the pressure to succeed. The pressures put on us from parents, professors, society, and even ourselves to succeed, I think, have been the largest contributors to this decline in mental health for college students. What I think is even more of an issue is how desensitized college students are to this crisis –  it has actually become integrated into college life culture. I don’t think twice if someone I know says they are thinking about dropping out of college, or that they are feeling so stressed they could start crying, or that they are struggling with a mental illness. This has gotten even worse since the pandemic started.

At first a few weeks of online classes sounded great, doing school from the comfort of my own bed sounded awesome. No need to turn on my camera, I just get up and go. But as time went on, so did COVID, and the changes that came with attending college during a pandemic impacted my mental health in ways that I didn’t even know were possible. Doing classes online made learning all that much harder for me. I definitely did not function well learning from a talking head on a screen. It was harder to pay attention, and harder to engage with my professor and peers via a screen. At the end of my day, I felt totally and completely drained mentally and physically. My desire to be with other people coupled with the fear of getting or giving COVID to my parents or others were always at odds with each other. I so desperately wanted to be back in the classroom, but when I was there I could hardly focus because I would be so worried about who is wearing their mask properly, or who isn’t social distancing. It really took a toll on me and a lot of people I know. The desire to be with others but the desire to also keep them safe by staying away from them was and still is really hard to navigate. This new worry, coupled with the already many worries and challenges that college students face was just icing on the cake of our mental health problems.

Since the pandemic started I’ve seen my own decline in mental health at various times and so I have tried to implement small changes in my routine that help me to cope better. My roommates and I try to have dinner once a week together so that we are intentional about catching up and spending time together that doesn’t have school or studying involved. We also try to spend every Friday evening together and do something relaxing or fun…one night where we don’t do homework or study, and we can just destress from the week. We might watch a movie or play a board game, or bake something together. It has been great to make intentional time planned into my week to not focus or worry about school, work or other things. These changes have been great, but I still spend most days feeling burnt out, and still wake up thinking about when I can go back to sleep. 

College is a very unique and taxing experience that can make or break you, but instead of leaving it there, we should continue to work towards finding better ways to prevent breaking students and promote ways of making them better. This includes bringing awareness to the current mental health status of college students and finding better ways to support and help us.