Psychotherapists are the emotional backbone of the mental health system. Every day, they hold space for people’s deepest struggles, traumas, and crises. Yet despite their expertise, therapists themselves face exceptionally high levels of stress and burnout. A growing body of research shows that 40–55% of psychotherapists experience moderate to high burnout, impacting not only their well-being but also the quality of care they provide.
Surprisingly, very few intervention studies specifically target therapists’ own mental health - a gap that innovative digital tools like VR-based relaxation are uniquely positioned to fill.
A newly published 2025 study in Frontiers in Digital Health explores precisely this frontier. Conducted at the University of Salzburg, researchers compared the classic safe place guided imagery exercise with a fully personalized, AI-generated virtual safe place using PsyTechVR. Their goal was simple: examine whether VR might offer a more accessible, more immersive, or more relaxing experience than imagination alone.
What they found paints a fascinating picture of where digital mental health is heading.

The safe place (or calm place) technique is one of the most widely used relaxation and emotion-regulation strategies in psychotherapy. Traditionally, a therapist guides the client to imagine a peaceful, comforting environment - such as a forest, beach, or cozy cabin - and engage their senses (sight, sound, touch, smell). This activates the parasympathetic “rest-and-digest” system, reducing physiological stress markers like heart rate and skin conductance.
But this method comes with a challenge: Not everyone has strong visualization skills. Some people struggle to mentally “see” a place clearly enough to relax, reducing the exercise’s effectiveness. Furthermore, anxiety often causes the imagination to falter, making it difficult to vividly picture the Safe Place in detail necessary for relaxation. This is where VR and AI create exciting possibilities.
By generating vivid, immersive spaces externally, VR removes the cognitive load of imagining scenes, making deep relaxation accessible even to people with low imagery ability. And when AI personalizes those scenes based on a user’s own descriptions, the experience can become deeply meaningful and emotionally resonant.

The Salzburg study recruited five practicing psychotherapists from an outpatient clinic. Over six weeks, the researchers used an ABCABC alternating-treatments design:

• A = baseline (no intervention)
• B = imagination-based safe place
• C = VR-based safe place using PsyTechVR

Each therapist completed weekly relaxation sessions lasting under four minutes - important, because therapists emphasized they needed very short, feasible workplace interventions.

In the first VR week, therapists generated their virtual environments inside PsyTechVR using up to five keywords (e.g., “autumn forest,” “ocean,” “mountain cabin,” “warm morning,” “meadow”).
The AI created photorealistic, static 3D environments, and participants could regenerate new versions up to two times to refine their safe place.
The therapists then completed the guided safe-place audio while wearing a Meta Quest 3 headset.

To understand relaxation effects, the study used:

• Subjective measures

- Relaxation State Questionnaire
- Visual Analog Scale

• Physiological measures

- Skin Conductance Levels (SCL), a marker of sympathetic nervous system activation

• Weekly burnout & stress indices

- Copenhagen Burnout Inventory
- Perceived Stress Scale

• Moderators

- Imagery ability
- Presence in VR
This multi-layered approach allowed detailed insight into moment-to-moment relaxation and longer-term stress changes.

Both conditions, imagination and PsyTechVR, produced large relaxation effects.
Effect sizes were above r > .50 on standard relaxation scales (RSQ-GR and rVAS).
So we know the protocol itself works. The VR version did not dilute the effect. It matched it.

Skin Conductance Level, a proxy for sympathetic arousal, dropped significantly in the VR condition in Week 3. That gives you objective proof that people were not just saying they felt better. Their bodies were calmer too.

Higher presence scores in VR are strongly tracked with better relaxation outcomes. In Week 3, the correlation between presence and relaxation was very high, rₛ = .89 (p = .021).

Participants rated how well the AI-built environments matched their expectations.
Average match score was about 75 out of 100. So the personalization was good enough to feel relevant, but not yet “perfect.” From a product view, that is a positive signal. You already clear the bar, and you still have headroom to differentiate. (PsyTechVR is releasing the new visual AI model in Q1 2026)

Four out of five psychotherapists said they would recommend PsyTechVR relaxation to their patients.

This study highlights how PsyTechVR’s AI-powered environment generator can:

• Reduce cognitive load
• Deliver immersive micro-breaks
• Support therapists' emotional resilience
• Personalize wellness interventions at scale
• Fit seamlessly into busy workflows

With continuous improvements - adding soundscapes, light motion, and expanded customization - PsyTechVR can play a pivotal role in shaping the future of digital mental wellness.

The 2025 Salzburg study adds to a growing scientific foundation showing that VR is not a gimmick - it is a powerful mental-health technology capable of producing rapid, measurable relaxation even in skilled mental health professionals.
While imagination remains a strong tool for those familiar with it, AI-enhanced virtual environments unlock access and ease for a wider range of users, including individuals with low imagery ability or high workplace stress.
For psychotherapists - and for organizations that employ them - tools like PsyTechVR offer a promising path forward: personalized, evidence-based digital wellness that fits into real-world schedules.