Hopefully, everyone had a restful holiday weekend -- we took a few days off and now feel ready to kick off the fall. And we couldn’t be more excited to announce that our September is starting with an amazing partnership with Eunoe Health to build an immersive mental wellness platform whose first initiative will be supporting healthcare workers on the front lines of Covid19 in NYC.
Even though it’s been almost six months since the Covid crisis started in the United States, we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface in examining the lasting mental health effects it will have on the people who are on the frontlines, treating patients as best they can while facing PPE shortages and dangerous conditions. There has already been one high-profile suicide, that of Dr Lorna Breen, and experts who gave testimony before Congress last month warned of more to come.
The fact is that the mental health crisis has been brewing in the United States for years and Covid just pushed us over the edge. There already was a massive shortage of mental health professionals who were unable to meet demand and now that demand has gone through the roof. This has taken a huge toll on the medical community with almost 50% of doctors and nurses and 60% of medical students reporting burnout before the pandemic.
Eunoe is collaborating with world-renowned experts at one of the world’s leading health systems to develop and test the application in a clinical trial this fall in NYC. They believe that their VR platform and its companion mobile web application have the potential to help people cultivate a greater sense of self-awareness, self-efficacy, and resilience by transforming negative thought patterns into adaptive methods of self-management. Given the state of affairs in our world right now, we could all use a platform like this. \
We’re also particularly thrilled that Eunoe is a female founded and led company, something we here at Friends With Holograms know a little about.This is also an opportunity for us to expand into work that is beyond our training and entertainment space, while staying true to our mission of creating immersive experiences that have a positive impact on the world.
Questions? Feel free to drop us a line, and if your organization is interested in creating something that makes a difference, we’d love to work with you.