Videoart may help patients at the ICU manage long-term psychological stress

While medical advancements over the past decades have dramatically improved survival rates in intensive care units (ICUs), life after an ICU stay can be surprisingly challenging. Studies have shown that a significant number of ICU survivors grapple with severe mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. These conditions, collectively known as post-intensive care syndrome, can persist for months or even years, leaving many survivors incapable of returning to work and supporting themselves.

Since conventional treatment strategies rarely address these psychological aftereffects, researchers have begun exploring innovative ways to support patients’ mental health during and after their stay at the ICU. Approaches like music therapy and those incorporating virtual reality have shown promise in helping patients cope with the stressful environment of the ICU. Showing patients videoart, a form of art that uses technology to create visual short films accompanied by sound, might be similarly effective. However, few studies have explored the potential benefits of videoart in this context.

To address this knowledge gap, a research team led by Prof. Pierre Singer and Dr. Tomer Arad from the Department of General Intensive Care at Rabin Medical Center–Beilinson Hospital, Israel, conducted a prospective study to evaluate whether videoart can reduce stress symptoms in ICU patients. Their work, published online in the Journal of Intensive Medicine on April 10, 2025, contributes greatly to our limited knowledge of this promising intervention.

The researchers used a real-world setup at their hospital to gather data for the study from patients hospitalized between April 2017 and June 2020. Eight of 18 ICU rooms were equipped with videoart systems displaying rotating views of forests, beaches, and flying birds, accompanied by natural sounds. Patients in all the ICU rooms were provided with a questionnaire during their stay and after discharge, assessing stress-related symptoms such as intrusive thoughts and avoidance behaviors commonly associated with trauma. In total, 81 patients who spent at least 48 hours in the ICU completed the questionnaire, and 24 patients responded to the follow-up questionnaire in June to August, 2021, one year after the last patient was included in the study.

While the immediate effects of videoart during ICU hospitalization were not significant, the long-term effects were pronounced. “We found that patients who were exposed to videoart in the ICU environment had a lower prevalence of high-risk stress symptoms after discharge than patients who were not,” remarks Dr. Arad. More specifically, among the 24 patients who completed the follow-up questionnaire, the rates of severe stress symptoms were only 12% for patients exposed to videoart, In contrast to 58% for the control group.

The researchers propose an intriguing explanation for why benefits seemed to appear only after discharge. During the ICU stay, patients face overwhelming stressors that may overpower the calming effects of nature videos. However, months later, these positive environmental influences might play a more prominent role in their psychological recovery. Hence, videoart may act as a “psychological buffer” that becomes evident only when patients have time to process their traumatic experience.

Overall, the results underscore the potential for supportive, non-pharmaceutical interventions to make a meaningful difference in the coping with the psychological challenges post-ICU stay. Although the sample size was small, the research team consider these initial findings encouraging. As Dr. Arad concludes: “We believe that our study found evidence for the possible beneficial effects of videoart on reducing stress symptoms among ICU patients, which justifies further research in this field.” Future, larger-scale studies with more controlled exposure to videoart will be crucial to fully understand and harness this technique as a powerful, low-cost, and low-risk intervention to help patients in the ICU overcome psychological stress.

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Reference
DOI: 10.1016/j.jointm.2025.02.001