An Affordances-Based Framework and Scoping Review of Virtual Reality Applications in Forensic Behavioral and Mental Health Assessment and Treatment

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) offers opportunities for behavioral and mental health assessment and treatment, for example by being able to overcome spatial restrictions, reduce participant risk, or to increase treatment motivation. In this article, we examine the merits of VR-based assessment and treatment through the lens of affordances, a term that captures the specific possibilities a technology offers when users interact with it. We argue that adopting the vocabulary of affordances can help better understand and exploit the opportunities VR offers for the design of assessments and treatments, boost their effectiveness, and provide an interdisciplinary terminology. We illustrate our approach in a scoping review on VR use in behavioral and mental health assessment and treatment in the forensic setting. We included 25 studies reporting on 20 different VR applications. The affordance of ‘transportation’ was most often applied (100% of the included applications) and ‘transformation’ least often with 30%. We conclude with a discussion of salient points regarding VR-based assessment and treatment in the forensic setting and address the usability of an affordances approach for VR-based assessment and treatment.