FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
VR Provides Opportunity for Community to Participate in Immersive Experiences
SAN FRANCISCO, January 25, 2018 - NewPathVR, a digital behavioral health company building virtual reality experiences to address mental health issues, is participating in the first ever Explore Tech event from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm on Saturday, January 26th, 2019, at the Visitacion Valley Branch of San Francisco Public Library. The event is open to the public, and includes, inter alia, informational sessions on library apps, experimenting with programming, virtual reality, and stop motion animation.
The Visitacion Valley Branch Library hosts regular events and workshops to promote online access and technology skill building to reduce digital disparities within the community. Similarly, Lisa Padilla, CEO of NewPathVR recognizes the fact that “While the San Francisco and Bay Area lead in so many ways with technology, there are large and visible disparities in many neighborhoods and with populations who have little or no access to these resources. Our community work aims to change this unfortunate reality.”
In anticipation of the upcoming event, Lisa Padilla, CEO of NewPathVR said “We feel honored to be part of Visitacion Valley Branch’s event and have the opportunity to introduce people to family-friendly virtual reality applications, such as music and art therapy. Our hope is that it will diminish the mystery around virtual reality and show people how wonderful and transformative an experience VR can be for youth and adults alike. Visitacion Valley Branch is the second library in the San Francisco Library system to showcase VR for the community, leading the way in closing the digital gap for edge populations with a wide diversity of generational and racial backgrounds, where we see a great concentration of mental health conditions.”
Branch Manager of Visitacion Valley Library, Barbara Daniels added “we are so excited to have VR here for the first time at the Visitacion Valley Library. This is a first for the library, and for many residents. We hope to show our community all of the amazing technology that is emerging in our society, and show them at their own local library.”
In a research paper published in October 2018 by Frontiers in Psychology, researchers said “Digital arts, as new mediums of creation have produced new forms of expression for art therapy,” “The unique characteristics of VR experience, compounded by the novel possibilities of artistic expression in VR further expand these therapeutic possibilities (Brown and Garner, 2016; Lohrius and Malchiodi, 2018).” “Moreover, when using art therapy in VR, clients create their own customized environment in the processes of therapy. Thus, circumventing a limitation of previous approaches to VR based psychotherapy. We suggest that VR based therapy, combining individualized creative processes in the unrestricted VR environment forms a therapeutic environment which can be well-tailored to the clinical needs of each individual.”
About NewPathVR
NewPathVR is the creator of digital behavioral health applications in virtual reality. With an aim to evoke positive change through conscious technology, the company uses research-based methods from its proprietary Active PsychologyTM library to create wellness applications for VR. They also teach accredited courses in VR Psychology and power the world’s first VR wellness portal - RenewVR.com.
Contact:
Monica Shakeri
Marketing and PR
NewPathVR
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1390 Market Street #2710
San Francisco, CA 94102
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