Sensalience on BBC News NI

Mental Abuse Matters is a Virtual Reality experience about mental abuse and a training, diagnostic and awareness tool for frontline medical and care staff to improve trauma care.  Our pilot film is a 10 minute live action VR drama about emotional abuse in a domestic setting, where the user is the embodied victim experiencing abusive practices such as gaslighting, veiled contempt, passive aggression and subtle public humiliation.

 

Rather than rely solely on dialogue or action to attempt to convey the inner landscape of the victim, our story uses immersive sound to replicate feelings of shame, humiliation, dread and panic in the user.

 

The pilot experience is aimed at healthcare practitioners including GPs, Psychotherapists, social workers and abuse counsellors as well as legal practitioners