With demand for mental health support growing rapidly and services struggling to keep up, the UK faces a critical need for effective, accessible, scalable and cost-efficient solutions.
Delivered by Innovate UK, the Mindset programme aims to grow the UK’s nascent immersive digital mental health sector. The funded projects are part of a targeted investment to unlock the transformative power of XR technologies, including creative, VR, augmented reality, mixed reality, haptics and immersive software and audio.
The technologies will be developed and trialled over 12 to 18 months, with the ambition to deliver next-generation digital therapeutics for people living with moderate to severe mental health conditions.
Projects granted funding include the award-winning augmented reality (AR) board game designed to address emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA) - "Dragons of Afterlands". Developed by Play Well For Life and in collaboration with young people, clinicians, and educators, the game is a socioemotional intervention that helps children overcome anxiety and form positive peer relationships.
Built on a previous Mindset Innovation, which focused on improving children's wellbeing in educational and healthcare settings, it has been adopted in schools and the NHS, including Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Another groundbreaking project, CrossSense, combines the use of smart glasses and an AI assistant to support those who have issues focusing or who struggle with memory loss. Ideal for those living with depression and dementia.
XR Therapeutics is developing a platform that integrates clinically proven therapies like Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) and trauma-focused CBT into virtual environments. With the technology not needing headsets and compatible with standard devices like laptops and tablets, it will make trauma treatment more accessible and scalable, tackling the problems of long waiting times and limited access to care.
Dr Cynthia Bullock, Director, Healthy Lives at Innovate UK, says: “Through this latest Mindset investment, we’re enabling powerful collaborations between the UK’s immersive technology sector and mental health providers. These go way beyond general wellbeing tools. They’re innovative and potentially powerful treatments for the millions of people across the UK whose lives are blighted by mental health conditions.
"By supporting their development, Innovate UK is unlocking solutions that have the power to drive real business growth, maximise social and economic impact and change lives."
Other projects include:
- VR Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Treatment Resistant Depression (Tend VR) – being developed in collaboration with leading experts and a major NHS Foundation Trust, the project sets to address Treatment Resistant Depression (TRD), a severe form of the condition that doesn't respond to standard treatments. Tend VR is combining a highly effective and evidence-based therapy (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)) with advanced virtual reality (VR) technology. By delivering MBCT in an immersive, interactive, and gamified digital environment, it overcomes the traditional challenges of delivering group-based therapy such as the logistics of organising and maintaining a consistent group and staffing and facility expenses. This makes it a much more scalable, accessible, and cost-effective solution. It is specifically designed to meet the unique needs of TRD patients, including overcoming common challenges like low motivation.
- Photography Based Therapeutics and the PBT app – Photography Based Therapeutics (PBT) is developing an app to support young people's mental health, using a unique combination of Augmented Reality (AR) and Generative AI to enable them to create a visual diary of their emotions. For young people in environments where photography is impractical, such as hospital wards, the app's generative AI feature ensures accessibility by enabling the creation of images from scratch. The app makes emotional expression possible for everyone, regardless of their location or circumstances. Integrating with platforms like Teams and Zoom, it will also provide clinicians with valuable, real-time insights during remote therapy sessions.
- SAFXR - Safety Planning for Suicide Prevention XR – is an immersive XR-based training solution that builds confidence and resilience in professionals who need to respond to those in a suicidal crisis. Using realistic scenarios, the technology provides essential safety planning skills for a wide range of practitioners, from health and social care to emergency services and educators. Developed in collaboration with NHS Education for Scotland and the University of Glasgow's Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory, this project also aims to support the mental health of the practitioners too, helping them to reflect on their own wellbeing and reduce the personal impact of their difficult job.
- Transforming Addiction Recovery with VR and Interactive Virtual Coaching (Life Process Program) – this project is developing a virtual reality (VR) addiction recovery program to make support much more accessible, particularly in regions like Northern Ireland, which faces a high number of drug-misuse deaths. The solution features a customisable virtual coach that guides individuals through an immersive and personalised recovery pathway. Having already achieved international adoption in the USA, this project is now focused on creating a scalable and cost-effective solution for charities and healthcare providers in the UK, aiming to lead the way in using digital health to improve addiction recovery.