Therapeutic haptics for mental health and wellbeing

Preliminary results in the literature have demonstrated how haptic technology can support mental health and wellbeing by addressing associated risks including abnormal levels of stress/anxiety as well as social isolation/exclusion. Given the importance of mental health on our personal, social, and professional lives, the aim of this chapter is to review therapeutic haptic technologies and their results for mental health and wellbeing to garner attention and interest from the community to investigate this topic more deeply. Included in this survey are commercial products, research prototypes, paradigms, and ideas, organized as follows: games, toys, and play; emotion regulation; stimulation therapy; distributed touch therapy; and haptics for social wellness. The final section, haptics for social wellness, presents a review of technologies to support and enrich social interactions, including devices to enable social touch from a distance (i.e., haptic interpersonal communication) as well as social assistive aids for individuals who are blind. Given the innovation seen within haptics for social wellness, this section is given the widest coverage, and surveys technologies, including those for therapy, play, and general communication, from a historical perspective. Finally, guidelines for designing mediators for haptic interpersonal communication are discussed.