Welcoming back an already stressed-out workforce struggling, once again, to transition their professional and personal lives without an end to COVID in sight, will come with a significant financial burden. Where is mental health support going to come from when the status quo can't fix employees' prolonged levels of stress and anxiety at a crippling cost to companies?

Another significant consideration is the fact that a secondary pandemic health crisis is underway due to the record-level of burnout and understaffing of health care workers. Experts predict this will cause a disruption to health care for at least the next three years.

Employers must think outside of the box to find affordable and sustainable solutions as there is a steep price to pay for a stressed-out/anxious workforce, especially when the result is turnover:

• Productivity tanks: According to the 2021 Employee Mental Health and Well-being Survey Report, close to 40% of respondents reported missing time at work due to COVID-related stress. For an employer with 5,000 employees, this equates to lost productivity of over $28 million per year.
• Corporate culture and brand perception become damaged: 74% of stressed workers reported job satisfaction being negatively impacted.
• Workers want employers to help: Sixty-six percent of employees believe that their employer could be doing more to support their well-being and mental health.

Where is the solution?

Crises give rise to innovation. They create moments where mindsets open to new ways of solving critical problems. Unlikely teams form and new ideas are born. Virtual reality is known by most as a transformative gaming technology, something cool their kids play games on in the living room but, in fact, it's been used and studied in health care for decades. Now with more accessible devices for consumers, it is reinventing how mental health care is delivered.

The foremost thinkers in digital health, neuroscience, bio-pharma, health systems, public health, and academia, are harnessing the unique neurological power of VR to supplement and scale mental health delivery. Via a headset that can be worn anytime, anywhere like at home or in a clinician's office as a supplement to current talk therapy, virtual reality transcends barriers to traditional delivery of mental health care, especially at a time when finding support is so difficult.

In June of 2021 research published in Nature Neuroscience described how VR can impact the brain on a deep level, impacting theta rhythms responsible for memories and emotions, helping to sharpen cognition and learn faster. Scientific breakthroughs like this, layered on to a body of research growing every day, will enable us to help millions build short-term coping skills and long-term resiliency.

Quality, sustainable and scalable care at lower cost, via VR programs, work via the neuroplasticity in the brain to lay down new neural pathways that transform how we respond to triggers, stressors and trauma. VR programs transport us into an immersive environment where we are engaged with learning and therapeutic experiences that lead us out of the chronic activation of our stress response and toward finding new ways to manage our stress, anxiety and fear.

Creating life-changing care experiences

What does treatment look like in this new therapeutic realm? In working with Johns Hopkins Healthcare Solutions, we developed a product that targets stress and anxiety, teaching mindfulness practice and emotion regulation skills. We put at the core of this program, the SAFE protocol (Stress, Anxiety, and Fear Extinction). Users step into a world where their attention is captured and the brain's four learning centers are activated. Here, they have the opportunity to engage, anywhere, anytime, in an evidence-based platform where they can learn to build their lifelong coping skills.

To test the power of this program, we went right to the workforce in the greatest need of healing and re-building, COVID nurses experiencing exhaustion and burnout though very often unlikely to seek mental health support for it. Trials underway report nurse stress reduction by 85% in just four weeks, and 66% report feeling revitalized to resume work after VR sessions.

We are just scratching the surface of the potential applications of VR by giving millions of people the agency to improve their mental health long-term, inexpensively and conveniently, while also creating new ways of accessing and experiencing mental health care that empowers and educates people in a capacity limited system. We believe there is a major role that benefits professionals can play in normalizing how people can incorporate mental wellness exercise into their daily routine the way we carve out an hour because we understand the benefit of physical exercise. Now is the time to think outside of the box and to challenge the status quo.

Aaron Gani is the founder and CEO of BehaVR Inc., creating digital therapeutics for behavioral health through the unmatched neurological power of Virtual Reality. Gani has been creating applications and experiences with technology throughout his career in health care and financial services, up to and including serving as Chief Technology Officer of Humana, a Fortune 50 managed care organization.

Read more: 

• Promoting a culture of worksite safety
• 3 rules to break for better mental health at work
• Rethinking total rewards for a 'workforce without walls'