# Thirty healthy adults explored four virtual Seribu Islands scenes for 15 minutes, state anxiety scores fell by 8 points and the underwater view ranked first

> Thirty healthy adults spent 15 minutes in a VR session built around the Seribu Islands and their median state-anxiety score dropped from 33.5 to 25.5 right after the headset came off. The paper reports a median difference of 8.0 points, with a...

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Byline: ARGO.net Editorial Team
Published: 2026-08-14T09:10:01+00:00
Categories: Health, News

![Two women in traditional attire enjoying virtual reality, showcasing modern technology](https://www.argo.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/virtual_reality_beach-1.jpg)

**Thirty healthy adults** spent **15 minutes in a VR session** built around the Seribu Islands and their median state-anxiety score dropped from 33.5 to 25.5 right after the headset came off. The paper reports a **median difference of 8.0 points**, with a 95% confidence interval from 4.39 to 8.61, after one guided exposure to four blue-space scenes.

The result comes from a 2026 [Depression and Anxiety study](https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/da/3317133) that tested whether a coastal, underwater, canoe and mangrove VR program could calm users before any trial in people receiving chemotherapy. The research team built the system as a non-drug option for future cancer care, where anxiety can interfere with comfort, treatment and quality of life.

Careful framing is still necessary. The paper describes a **preliminary study** with one group, no control condition, only adults ages **18 to 40 years old** and only healthy volunteers. The drop in anxiety was immediate and encouraging, yet the design cannot prove that the virtual island scenes alone caused every change and it cannot show that cancer patients would respond in the same way.

## How the 15-minute test worked

The research team recruited volunteers through online announcements and flyers, then screened for a narrow set of conditions. Participants could not be taking regular medication for illnesses such as hypertension, epilepsy, or diabetes. They were also excluded if they used glasses or contact lenses, had hearing or sensory impairments, or had a strong fear of heights, water, or the ocean. Those limits helped standardize the headset experience, though they also narrowed who the findings can represent.

The VR program ran on a [**Meta Quest 2**](https://www.meta.com/quest/products/quest-2/) and presented four 360-degree blue-space scenes from Indonesia's Seribu Islands: an underwater view, a coastal forest, a canoe trip across open water and a walk through mangroves. Some scenes were mostly static, while the canoe and mangrove sequences added slight movement. Optional layers such as music, natural sounds, bubbles and fireflies could be switched on or off.

Before the session, each participant completed the [State-Trait Anxiety Inventory](https://www.mindgarden.com/), the standard questionnaire used here to measure current anxiety. After the headset session, they completed the same anxiety scale again, then a user-experience survey, then a **Cybersickness Syndrome Questionnaire**. Small-group interviews followed so the researchers could compare the score changes with what participants said they felt.

The broader medical idea behind the program is easy to see. The paper opens with the burden of cancer care and the same concern appears in the current [World Health Organization cancer fact sheet](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer), which notes that cancer remains a leading cause of death worldwide. The Seribu Islands program was built as a possible calming distraction for chemotherapy settings, though this first step measured feasibility in healthy adults rather than treatment outcomes in patients.

## What changed after the headset came off

The clearest finding was the shift in the anxiety scores themselves. Median STAI-State scores moved from 33.5 before exposure to 25.5 after exposure and the paper reports a large effect size of **r = 0.83**. In a small exploratory study, that kind of movement is enough to justify a closer follow-up trial.

Participants also rated the experience well beyond basic tolerability. The average user-experience score was 4.48 out of 5, with especially strong ratings for delight and enjoyment. Every participant agreed or strongly agreed that the system was easy to learn, satisfying to use and worth trying, which suggests the headset itself did not create a major usability barrier for this sample.

Another useful detail is timing. The study measured mood immediately before and after a single session, so the result describes a short-term change rather than a durable improvement lasting days or weeks. The paper does not answer whether repeated exposures would produce the same drop, a smaller drop once novelty fades, or a stronger effect as users become more familiar with the scenes.

The source itself deserves one more look, because the strongest claims sit beside the strongest limits. The authors explicitly say the lack of a control group leaves room for other explanations, including simple relaxation during a quiet break, the novelty of immersive technology, or the passage of time between the two measurements.

## Why the underwater scene ranked first

Preference data gave the study a more concrete texture than a simple before-and-after score. When participants ranked the four videos, the **underwater view** came first. The least favored content was the mangrove forest sequence, which suggests that the type of blue-space imagery may matter almost as much as the fact that it is watery or natural.

Settings mattered too. The most preferred package kept music, natural sounds and animations turned on, while the least preferred package turned all three off. The ranking fits a basic VR principle: immersion usually feels stronger when visuals, audio and small environmental cues work together instead of leaving the user in near silence with a flatter visual scene.

The interviews point in the same direction. Participants often described the experience as calming, realistic, refreshing, or close to actual tourism. Participant comments do not prove a biological mechanism, but they do help explain why the scores moved in the same session. A scene that feels vivid and pleasant can hold attention away from stress and distraction is one of the intervention paths the paper is trying to test.

The same design logic appears in the wider cancer-care literature. A 2023 [systematic review and meta-analysis](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejon.2023.102424) in the European Journal of Oncology Nursing found that immersive VR reduced anxiety in chemotherapy studies, while also lowering several other burdens in adult and pediatric settings. The Seribu Islands paper does not add clinical proof on its own, yet it fits a growing line of work suggesting that immersive environments can support emotional coping during care.

## What the low cybersickness scores mean

VR studies rise or fall on comfort, because a calming scene loses value if the headset produces nausea or dizziness. Here the six cybersickness items stayed low, with mean scores ranging from 1.27 to 1.73 on a 1 to 7 scale. Most participants reported no symptoms on most items, which is a practical result for any future medical setting.

The paper gives a sharper breakdown for a few categories. For nausea A, 86.7 percent reported an absent feeling. For vestibular A, 83.3 percent reported no symptoms. A small fraction of responses reached the intense range in nausea A, nausea B and oculomotor B, yet each of those clusters stayed below 5 percent. The distribution supports the paper's claim that discomfort was present for some users but usually mild.

Hardware and scene design probably helped. The researchers used short exposure, modest scene motion and an off-the-shelf headset that is common in VR research. Even so, the glasses exclusion matters here. People who rely on visual correction were left out partly to avoid fit problems, reflection and reduced clarity, which means the low discomfort scores may not transfer cleanly to a broader patient population.

User comfort also has a clinical side. Someone already dealing with chemotherapy fatigue, pain, or nausea may respond differently from a healthy volunteer standing in a quiet research setting. A low cybersickness profile in healthy adults is a necessary first checkpoint, yet it remains only a checkpoint before any claim about routine bedside use.

## Why the result stays preliminary

The word preliminary in the paper's own title is the right way to read the whole study. The sample was small, there was no comparison group, the participants were healthy rather than in treatment and the age range was limited. The headset protocol was also selective enough to exclude people who needed glasses or had sensory constraints, which trims away many real patients who could eventually be offered such a tool.

The cancer framing needs the same caution. The authors built the intervention because anxiety is common during chemotherapy and non-drug approaches are attractive when clinicians want to avoid extra medication burden. Still, this study did not measure infusion-room stress, treatment adherence, pain during procedures, or sleep after chemotherapy. It measured a short mood shift in a preparatory sample.

Even with those limits, the study contributes something useful. It shows that a blue-space VR program can be delivered in a simple format, that participants usually tolerate it well and that the immediate anxiety scores moved in a favorable direction. Early-stage intervention work often uses signals like these to decide whether a larger randomized trial is worth the effort.

A stronger next step would compare the Seribu Islands program with quiet rest, non-immersive video, or another VR environment so the specific role of immersion and nature content becomes clearer. Until that happens, the safest conclusion is narrow: this **single-group pilot** suggests that a short, immersive island experience may ease momentary anxiety in selected healthy adults and it gives researchers a practical template for testing whether the same idea can help people in cancer care.