Mental health is an important part of our lives because it consists of our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Mental health affects our thinking, feeling, and actions, so we should care about our mental health to increase our living standards. For example, we should realize the negative circumstances for our mental health and try to decrease the number of the negative things. The negative things can be everything, like social media or relationships with other people, so every situation should be considered for having good mental health. Metaverse is one of the situations that has possible impacts on people’s mental health. Now, we want to explain the impacts of Metaverse on our mental health.

Positive Impacts of Metaverse on Mental Health

Diagnosing and treating mental health disorders

As we emphasized above, we should protect our mental health from negative situations to live happily and focus on our responsibilities in a good way. Sometimes, protecting mental health cannot be simple, and some psychological problems, such as depression and anxiety, can emerge. At that point, we can think about an amazing technology called Metaverse. Metaverse can support and develop the treatments of various mental diseases and psychological disorders.

In an old article, we mentioned that virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) can be utilized for accessing Metaverse, and these technologies are also used in the diagnosis process and treatments of mental health disorders. With these technologies, people can create virtual simulations which represent the circumstances that could not be recreated in the real world. After that, people who suspect their mental health deal with the simulations, and then, mental health disorders of these people are diagnosed. Like VR ad AR simulations, the simulations of Metaverse can be utilized for diagnosis processes of psychiatric disorders by doctors.

In addition to the diagnosis processes, we can talk about the treatments of mental health disorders. For instance, VR-based continuous performance tests are used for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, especially in children. Furthermore, some VR-based simulations can involve a full of food environment for teaching how to cope with the stimuli of foods people with eating disorders. Like these examples, necessary environments can be created in Metaverse, and they can be used in the treatment processes of mental health disorders, like anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, delusions, psychosis, and schizophrenia.

Meeting with dead living things

We cannot underestimate the effect of dead precious living things in our lives. Although various living creatures say goodbye to us with death, we cannot forget them, and the circumstance affects our mental health badly. From death, we start to miss the creatures and sorrow due to their disappearance. The creatures can be our pets or people who have a huge value in our lives.

The sadness and feeling of missing coming with death can be solved with Metaverse. In an old article, we mentioned a process in Metaverse that provides users with the chance of living forever and meeting with dead living creatures. If people consider the development in Metaverse, they can reunite with the people they love virtually. Then, their mental health can be supported, and avoiding mental health disorders can be an easy process with the help of the technological development in Metaverse.

Building quick and beneficial relationships

As you know, relationships affect our mental health both badly and splendidly. Because of the situation, we should create relationships with proper people. In the creation process, we can consider the personality traits of people, and then, we can decide whether we should be friends with the people.

Individuals can manage the process of being friends in Metaverse, and the circumstance can support their mental health abstractly. In Metaverse, individuals get the opportunity of socializing and expanding their network. They can use the opportunity to develop their mental health. In other words, individuals can build beneficial relationships virtually in Metaverse, and some ‘virtual’ friends can sweeten their Metaverse-based friends up in terms of psychology.

Negative Impacts of Metaverse on Mental Health

Metaverse addiction

There are a lot of addictions that affect people’s lives and their mental health. For example, smoking is an unhealthy addiction for people, and people who smoke encounter death at an early time. Like smoking, digital platforms can be addictions. We are always dealing with social media platforms, such as Instagram and Twitter, and the circumstance can develop social media addiction. The addiction is bad for everyone because people start to forget real life, their family members, friends, and so on. In other words, people start to live on social media platforms, and they cannot manage their lives in a good way. Then, their mental health is damaged, and big problems, like suicide, can emerge due to the situation. Like social media addiction, there is another addiction called crypto addiction. Some people who invest and trade cryptocurrencies can present problematic behaviors because of crypto addiction. The addiction is also an awful situation because people’s living standards and mental health are affected in a bad way.

In addition to crypto addiction, we can mention the addictive side of Metaverse. The virtual world can often affect people’s mental health in a good way, but also it can create addiction. People love spending time in Metaverse because they can go to the cinema, go shopping, watch their favorite sports competitions, meet new individuals, and play games without going out. Yes, Metaverse offers a lot of opportunities to us for making our time meaningful. However, the digital world can develop an addiction in people because of its great opportunities. For example, people can forget to take care of their children and eat due to their huge time in Metaverse. In other words, people might be abstracted from the real world because of Metaverse addiction, and the circumstance can affect their mental health and cognitive skills in a bad way. Because of the possibility of Metaverse addiction, every people should manage their time in Metaverse properly.

Identity confusion

As you know, users should create their avatars to spend time in Metaverse. Some people try to create their original version as an avatar while some people create avatars that are different from their real version in the virtual world. Because of the creation of ‘not-real’ avatars, identity confusion starts.

In Metaverse, people try to show their best version with the help of their avatars, but they forget the real side of their individualism. Then, they start to rely on their virtual version (their avatars), and the situation affects their mental health badly. Due to the gorgeousness of the virtual versions of people, they move away from the real world individuals, especially their real-world versions. For example, they want to resemble their great avatars and request some operations from plastic surgeons to be their virtual version in the real life. The identity confusion and improper wishes affect people’s lives, and sometimes the situation cannot be fixed.

Conclusion

As you can understand, Metaverse presents both advantages and disadvantages to us. We can support our mental health with the help of the virtual world, but we also should consider other sides of the world because of the negative impact. Therefore, every person should focus on both the positive and negative sides of Metaverse to protect their mental health.