A resident’s lifelong connection to nature. A clinician trained to listen. And a VR headset that made thirty years disappear.
VR in aged care mental health programs does not always look clinical. For Lola, an 87-year-old resident in South Western Sydney, it looked like Africa. She stood among elephants, watched a chimpanzee draw close enough to almost touch, and felt, in her words, “relaxed but exciting.” When the session ended, she said she did not want it to stop.
The experience was part of a SilVR session delivered by Sabrina Tian, a Mental Health Clinician at C2bMe. C2bMe is a free psychological treatment program for residential aged care residents in South Western Sydney, funded by South Western Sydney PHN and delivered by Uniting. The program provides 1:1 therapeutic support and group services for residents experiencing mild to moderate mental illness. Its core conviction: that older people living in residential care deserve the same access to mental health services as anyone else in the community.
“You’ve got no idea what you do for me,” Lola told Sabrina after removing the headset. “Really and truly. It’s wonderful.”
A session built on who Lola actually is
What made the Africa experience land so completely was not the technology. It was that it matched who Lola is.
Lola had visited Africa in her fifties. She had kept a goat dairy, milked around eighty goats, made yogurt, run distributors. She had always felt a connection with animals that other people did not quite share. While the tourists on her African safari retreated, Lola stepped forward. When an elephant walked towards her, she told it she was not frightened. It swirled its trunk and walked away.
Decades later, inside a residential aged care home, the headset gave her all of that back. The scenery. The water. The animals. “Everything that I remember,” she said. “And I was back there.”
Sabrina watched the whole session. She noticed Lola’s body drawing forward, trying to reach the animals, leaning in. When a chimpanzee came close, Lola’s surprise was not fear. It was delight. She described the moment as “absolutely amazing.” She described the whole experience as reality.
What the C2bMe model makes possible
C2bMe’s approach is person-centred in the clinical sense. Delivered by Uniting’s clinicians, it is built to reinforce identity, increase connectedness, and improve the day-to-day functioning of residents who might otherwise have no access to structured mental health support. Within that framework, SilVR sessions are not recreation. They are a therapeutic tool, chosen to meet a specific person where they are.
For Lola, the match was immediate. Sabrina reflected back what she had observed: the physical engagement, the emotional immersion, the way a lifelong relationship with animals had not faded at all. Lola had gone somewhere real. “I’ve been to Africa today,” she said, laughing.
By the end of the session, the pair were already planning the next journey. Lola had a destination in mind: the Nazca Lines in Peru, enormous figures carved into rock, visible only from the air. She had been there too.
“I don’t want it to stop,” she said. “Okay, let’s continue,” said Sabrina.
About C2bMe and Uniting
Continuing To Be Me (C2bMe) is a psychological treatment program for people living in residential aged care homes in South Western Sydney. It is funded by South Western Sydney PHN and delivered by Uniting, a not-for-profit organisation providing care and support across NSW and the ACT. C2bMe offers free 1:1 therapeutic mental health support and group programs for eligible residents, designed to improve wellbeing and reinforce identity, connectedness and purpose. uniting.org
