Valentino Megale: Shaping the Future of Mental Health in Virtual Worlds

Dr. Valentino Megale

In May 2024, the Saint Pierre International Security Center (SPCIS) launched the “Global Tech Policy at the Forefront” series, featuring conversations with leading experts on the impact of emerging technologies—such as AI, blockchain, biometrics, and robotics—on global governance and public policy.

On June 9, 2025, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Valentino Megale. Valentino is a tech entrepreneur specializing in digital health, XR technologies, and mental well-being. He is the President of XRSI Europe and, since 2017, has served as the CEO and co-founder of Softcare Studios—a digital health startup that develops virtual reality solutions for stress management and therapeutic education for patients undergoing medical treatments. Valentino holds a Ph.D. in Neuropharmacology and he's currently also lecturer at the Rome Business School and Program Director of its International Master in Artificial Intelligence. Additionally, he serves as a TEDx speaker and a writer who explores topics at the intersection of emerging technologies, healthcare, and social impact.

In this interview, we delve into his professional perspective on the role of VR/XR technologies in transforming mental health treatment, focusing on their potential for stress and pain management, ethical challenges, and the importance of aligning technological innovation with values like privacy and inclusion.

SPCIS : To start, as President of XRSI Europe, could you briefly share what inspired you to establish this initiative? How does XRSI Europe foster collaboration among stakeholders to bridge tech innovation with European values like privacy, safety, and inclusion in shaping the future of virtual worlds?

Dr. Valentino Megale: Together with my co-founding colleagues, I was driven to help establish this initiative out of both inspiration and necessity. XRSI Europe is the regional extension of the global non-profit SDO XRSI, founded by Kavya Pearlman in San Francisco. While we work closely with the international XRSI team and share a common vision, we recognise that the European ecosystem demands a more localised approach—one that reflects the continent’s unique historical, cultural, and societal complexities. Europe is a rich mosaic of values, traditions, and regulatory frameworks, and we believed it was essential to create a space where European voices could meaningfully contribute to shaping the future of immersive technologies. XRSI Europe acts both as a bridge and a safeguard. Our mission is to ensure that technological innovation—especially in virtual and immersive environments—is aligned with core European values such as privacy, safety, human dignity, and inclusion. We promote collaboration across policymakers, researchers, industry stakeholders, and civil society through multidisciplinary working groups, strategic research initiatives, and educational programs. Our pillars are awareness, education, and responsible research. We raise public understanding, build digital literacy and cognitive resilience through training, and co-develop methodologies to embed ethics and safety into emerging tech. Our active involvement with the European Commission—particularly within the AR/VR Industrial Coalition—reflects our commitment to co-designing policy and practical solutions. In doing so, we don’t seek to slow innovation, but to steer it through informed, inclusive dialogue and evidence-based strategies, ensuring that future virtual worlds reflect and reinforce the values Europe holds dear.

SPCIS: A recent study by the PainWaive research team demonstrated that VR-based brain training games can effectively reduce chronic neuropathic pain, offering a promising drug-free alternative. Based on your expertise, where do you see the  biggest untapped potential for VR to transform mental health treatment? And what critical barriers still need to be addressed before these digital therapies become mainstream?"

Dr. Valentino Megale: In my research activity, I recently described in the paper entitled “Reimagining Identity, Healing, and Equality Through Extended Reality: A Societal Revolution of Virtual Worlds” and written together with Mariachiara Tirinzoni for IGI, XR offers us unprecedented sensory and interaction freedom while simulating on-demand virtual spaces and virtual bodies. The potential of VR in mental health lies in its capacity to reshape perception, not just deliver information, thus impacting the behavioural loop that starts with sensory stimulation and follows up with our actions (both cognitive and motor). Unlike conventional digital tools, VR can recreate realistic (for our brain first), safe, controllable environments that directly engage the sensorimotor and emotional circuits involved in anxiety, trauma, or chronic pain. This is the foundation of VR applications in areas like drug-free pain management, exposure therapy for phobias and PTSD, immersive cognitive behavioural interventions, and social VR for treating loneliness and depression. However, the path to mainstream adoption faces three key barriers: lack of robust clinical validation and long-term data; uneven integration with traditional care systems and skill gaps in VR literacy; and the ethical risks linked to immersion—such as data privacy, dissociation, dependency, or misuse. Without clear guidelines and cross-sector collaboration, these risks may undermine trust before the benefits reach scale.

SPCIS: From a business standpoint, what niche market need is your company addressing with VR mental health solutions, and why is now the right time for this technology?

Dr. Valentino Megale: Softcare Studios addresses a critical and often overlooked gap in healthcare: the need for non-pharmacological, accessible solutions to manage stress and pain in patients undergoing medical treatments. Traditional interventions tend to focus solely on physical symptoms, underestimating both the emotional and experiential dimensions of pain—which is not merely a sensory signal but a complex, subjective phenomenon shaped by context, cognition, and emotion. At Softcare Studios, we take a radically different approach. We view pain through a semiotic lens—as a set of signs shaped by the environment, expectations, and the meanings attributed by the patient. Immersive technologies like Virtual Reality allow us to act as “semiotic transformers”: while the physical condition may remain unchanged, we can alter the surrounding system of signs to create a new, more tolerable experience of pain. This re-signification process makes the suffering more manageable and less distressing, supporting both clinical outcomes and patient dignity. We develop evidence-based VR experiences tailored to the specific vulnerabilities of different patient populations—children, adults, and the elderly. These experiences help reduce pain perception, decrease reliance on pharmacological sedation (and the side effects and costs associated with it), and support clinical staff in managing patients more efficiently and empathetically. The timing is critical: healthcare systems are under pressure, mental health is gaining overdue recognition, and digital therapeutics like VR are becoming validated, regulated, and increasingly reimbursable. What was once experimental is now a pragmatic, impactful tool in the evolution of patient-centered care.

SPCIS: VR systems collect highly sensitive biometric and behavioral data. How should the industry ensure patient privacy while still enabling effective personalized treatment? What key ethical considerations should VR developers and clinicians keep in mind to avoid unintended harm?

Dr. Valentino Megale: VR systems collect deeply personal biometric and behavioral data—ranging from eye movement and body posture to cognitive and emotional patterns—offering powerful insights but also raising serious privacy and ethical concerns. To protect patient privacy while enabling personalised care, data governance must evolve beyond minimal compliance into a model of ethics-by-design. This includes ensuring truly informed consent within immersive environments, minimising data collection to what is strictly necessary, and prioritising local or on-device processing to reduce data exposure. At XRSI Europe, building on the global efforts of XRSI, we work actively to identify the emerging risks associated with the growing scale of XR technology adoption. Our goal is to clarify what data is being collected, where vulnerabilities lie, and how organisations can mitigate these risks proactively. One of the most recent contributions in this space is the launch of the Responsible Data Governance (RDG) Standard and Certification Framework, developed by XRSI to provide companies and institutions with a structured, auditable approach to managing data in extended reality environments. This standard offers a concrete tool to move the conversation from theory to action. Following on this, developers and clinicians must also be mindful of the psychological impact of immersive experiences. Systems should not be able to manipulate behaviour, amplify bias, or overexpose patients to emotionally intense content without safeguards. There is a fine boundary between therapeutic immersion and unintended psychological intrusion. To navigate this, we need transparent design standards, interdisciplinary ethics review boards, and widespread digital literacy—not only for developers but also for patients and clinicians—to foster a culture of safety, trust, and accountability in the use of XR in healthcare.

SPCIS: Looking ahead, what emerging VR technologies do you believe will most impact mental health treatment in the next 5-10 years?

Dr. Valentino Megale: Over the next 5–10 years, several emerging VR technologies are poised to profoundly transform mental health treatment. Among the most impactful is the integration of AI-driven personalization—where immersive environments adapt in real time to biometric and behavioral feedback, offering dynamically tailored therapeutic experiences. We're also entering an era of spatial intelligence, a convergence paradigm where AI requires spatial data to effectively learn and operate within the complex physical world, while XR technologies—infused with AI—gain the capacity to not only deliver cognitively rich experiences but to fluidly adapt to individual user needs. Another powerful frontier is the fusion of XR with neurotechnology, such as non-invasive brain-computer interfaces, which could open new pathways for emotion regulation, cognitive training, and mood stabilization. Additionally, the development of networked therapeutic spaces will enable new models for care, from group therapy in shared virtual environments to cross-border access to mental health professionals. Particularly promising is the use of embodied avatars and narrative simulations, which allow users to explore trauma, rehearse coping strategies, or reconstruct their sense of self from a safe, first-person perspective. These immersive narratives are not just tools for distraction—they become experiential spaces for psychological transformation. However, as we explored together with Mariachiara Tirinzoni and Serena Faccio during the recent International Congress on the Metaverse in Alicante (in the session “Synthetic selves: exploring identity construction through virtual avatars and AI in XR environments”), these technologies carry emerging risks that are not yet fully named. AI-powered virtual spaces can mirror and amplify user behavior, potentially creating identity-based echo chambers or diluting personal identity through algorithmic modeling based on collective datasets. These critical issues—at the intersection of ethics, identity, and cognition—require urgent attention now, before the technologies become too embedded to redesign. The future of mental health care in XR depends not only on technical innovation, but on our collective ability to anticipate, regulate, and humanize it.