Regulating young people in crisis using Virtual Reality - a case study

“Using VMind helped 'unlock' Hannah”

Hannah* Age 16 - Year 11

Background

Hannah* is aged 16 and in Year 11. She attends Springwell Academy a Leeds based SEND school. Her home life is difficult. She has no secure base due to a lack of parental support. She is now in independent living, learning to support herself both emotionally and physically.

Typically Hannah is mis-trusting of adults and finds it difficult to speak about her life, typically she is non engaging with services. She is limited in her ability to communicate her experiences and emotions, and there are only a few people at the school that she will communicate with at all. She is very much a closed book, making it difficult to unlock her thoughts in order to make steps towards supporting her emotional needs.

Using VMind helped 'unlock' Hannah

VMind was given to Hannah to try in a targeted intervention, a process that Springwell Academy champion as part of their strategy in supporting their pupils. Hannah sat quietly in the school library for a time and worked through the first sessions on the headset. She was observed drifting into a calm state for a time and following the session she removed the headset.

Immediately following the session Hannah became very calm and just began speaking… she opened up and began to discuss all the complexities and issues in her life in way the school seldom witnesses.

Ben Roberts from Springwell Academy says:

“When the body doesn’t understand what it is to be calm, pupils find it very difficult to communicate. VMind gives them a process to relax and the environment creates a nice calm place away from themselves and the world. It seemed to enable Hannah the space to communicate in a calm way without interference from her catastrophising thought processes"

*Names are changed for confidentiality purposes