Looking Through Your Eyes: Using Immersive Virtual Reality to Promote Well-Being among Cancer Survivors and Their Partners

The growing success of cancer therapy has increased the survival rates of many oncological diseases, posing the challenge of how to sustain survivors' wellbeing. Since partners are the most important source of support for patients, and their role is essential to successfully cope with the challenges associated with the disease, the current study aims to enhance the survivors' adjustment to the post-treatment life changes by focusing on the couple's well-being. An Embodied Perspective-Taking (EPT) paradigm will be implemented by using Virtual Reality (VR) to propose a VR Patient-Journey (VR-PJ) that guides the partner in feeling on their skin what their significant other is suffering and the problems they are facing. EPT will create in the participant the perceptual illusion of taking the perspective of the partner, allowing the caregiver to see through their eyes, from a first-person perspective, all the steps of the partner's oncological journey, from the diagnosis to the current daily life. Our hypothesis is that the VR-PJ will work as a transformative experience able to promote empathic communication and greater couple wellbeing.