Design of Virtual Reality Scenes on Horticultural Therapy Treatment

The prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders has increased dramatically in the last two years due to the global COVID-19 epidemic, which leads to a shortage of traditional mental health care resources. To address these issues, we propose to use the digital, immersive, and private features of virtual reality technology to assist in the treatment of mental illness. We designed and completed a garden scene for virtual reality horticultural therapy based on the basic principles of traditional horticultural therapy. In order to study the effectiveness of the gardening scenario, we recruited 30 subjects to explore the effectiveness of mood regulation. A survey of a PANAS scale was conducted before and after the garden scene, and a user experience scale was presented to the subjects after the experiment. The ANOVA results showed that there were significant differences between anxious, distressed and self-loathing before and after the experiment. This demonstrates that virtual reality horticulture therapy has a mood-improving effect. In future works, we will improve the design of VR gardening scenarios and conduct more in-depth research on virtual reality horticulture therapy.