How more thoughtful use of tech can support better sleep and mental health

Feat. Tom Middleton’s use of sound to improve sleep, Corvas Brinkerhoff’s plans for Submersive bathing spas, and thymia’s mental health platform founded on games.

There have been therapies, rituals, medicines and healing since the dawn of time, but in today’s world the need is different. Skilled technologists are turning our entrenched digital habits on their heads to lead us away from crumpled necks and crooked thumbs, using emerging technologies to support sleep, relaxation, and mental health.

More than 2 million people are “on waiting lists for NHS mental health support in England alone,” reports Mind in their Big Mental Health Report 2024, and our crumbling mental health crisis is sweeping through the child population as much as adults.

Jane Graham has been a school nurse for nearly 20 years and the nature of her work has completely changed: “When I started, the majority of the support we provided was for physical health, like asthma, allergic reactions and injuries,” she tells the BBC. “Now it’s mental health… We’re seeing children with depression, anxiety and stress – and that’s leading to panic attacks, self-harm and eating disorders. They’re not making it to school or are so anxious they cannot attend classes.”

By recognising an urgent need to attend to our wellness within this new reality, technologists are building better patterns of care to support every generation.

Introducing sound to settle poor sleep habits

Today, the UK Addiction Treatment Centres (UATC) report we have “new epidemics” where “around 1 in 8 adults in the UK suffer from a form of behavioural addiction, including excessive use of the internet and social media platforms.”

Dependence on a smartphone and constantly checking notifications is “driven by reinforcement learning … Users receive positive feedback, such as social interactions or gaming rewards, reinforcing the need to check their devices,” they say. “Mentally, it is associated with increased anxiety, stress, and attention problems.” The body and mind naturally begin to suffer.

Tom Middleton, a classically trained musician who moved into electronics as a DJ, understands better than most what happens to your body when it doesn’t get the rest it needs, like not functioning as well as it should, or becoming over-emotional. He’s “played to over a million people in 49 countries – opening shows for artists like Kanye West, Lady Gaga and Snoop Dogg,” and after years of constant travel and sleep deprivation, started work on tackling the problem.

Speaking with DJ Scuba (Paul Rose) in a podcast interview, Middleton says he became interested in “sleep hygiene and how to hack sleep” before retraining as a sleep science coach. He and others he knew who were suffering were keen to “divorce the gadgets” and get better rest.

Realising his ambient music was being used by people “to fall asleep to,” Middleton says he recognised “the music can help people ― it’s functional, it’s useful, intentional,” bringing “meaning and value”. That was the start of a move into wellness using sound.

“We are constantly distracted, in this state of hyperarousal of fight or flight all the time. We’re triggered, whether it’s on our phone or we hear a noise. On every level, our nervous systems are being pushed into this elevated state.” ―Tom Middleton

Calming down nervous systems with sound therapy

Having seen first hand how music affects people, and now expert in behavioural psychology, Middleton tells DJ Scuba he has the “highest performing content on Calm” where you can listen to his “tranquil, immersive soundscapes abundant with the sounds of the natural world” to help you sleep better.

He also heads up the wellness consultancy White Mirror with a clear mission to recognise “true well-being starts with reconnecting to ourselves, our community, and the world around us.”

Alongside co-founder Ramy Elnagar and a team of CreaTech specialists, White Mirror uses sound to improve wellbeing through apps, AI, and immersive experiences. 

Forest bathing with sound and visuals to restore calm

In 2024, White Mirror teamed up with the immersive art collective, Marshmallow Laser Feast to take their sound experiences into real-world spas for the Thermengruppe Josef Wund spa group. The result, a 24-minute immersive experience where waterfalls and rain machines, spatial audio and projections of the Amazonian sky offers visitors “a sensory reset”. 

“Over 81% of participants reported feeling less anxious, and many experienced a stronger connection with nature,” reports the White Mirror team.

As the positive effects of immersive and creative tech are proven to enhance wellbeing, more experiences are on their way to help us recover from the ill-effects of stressful living.

Combining ancient rituals with modern-day trends

Corvas Brinkerhoff, one of the original founders of immersive experience masters, Meow Wolf, is introducing “third-spaces” through a new company: Submersive. The first venue will be 25,000 square feet and have multiple rooms that contribute to a “full-sensory” immersive experience that brings a “profound shift in health, balance, and perspective.”

Water-based contrast therapy features heavily in ambitions for Submersive. Traced back to ancient Rome, switching between hot and cold temperatures is said to have healing powers by opening and constricting the veins for better blood circulation, pain relief, draining toxins, and more.

Corvus plans to use old ideas for healing and combine them with common trends we see today, bringing together popular rituals like sauna use, ice plunges, and flotation tanks with immersive sound and vision. If you’ve ever been to an immersive art gallery like Frameless, you’ll know technologists are presenting art to us in new ways all the time, so you can imagine psychedelic artworks, ambient sounds, and lighting arrangements surrounding you in communal baths.

This isn’t just taking an ice bath because it’s a TikTok trend, this is an all-encompassing multi-sensory experience in a finely tuned space. As heat from the water soothes your aching body or a cold compress of fluid focuses your mind, colours and sensations are in the waters with you, filling the space.

The immersion is heightened further by the use of AI to personalise the experience to every visitor, since it can be used to uncover the best rooms or experiences within the baths to bring people their greatest healing, depending on their particular problems or desires. 

Concept for Submersive, brought to life by artist Lua Brice:

^{Images source: Leisure Opportunities}

“You can think of Submersive as one giant R&D lab for studying the potential therapeutic impact of immersive experiences,” says Corvas, launching first in Austin, Texas.

By blending old and new technologies, artists and scientists are retiring restrictive, unhealthy uses of technology, and rejuvenating the field with bold new visions for a healthier future, both physically and mentally.

Even some of our most pervasive technologies, like video games, that have been accused in the past of being addictive, violent, and isolating, are being redirected for doing good. That’s the space where technology company, thymia, is focused on making the biggest change.

Playing gamification at its own game to recognise mental illness

First founded in 2020 by Dr Emilia Molimpakis and Dr Stefano Goria, thymia first sought to make good use of video games by using them to spot mental health conditions like depression. They know people are frequently not receiving help they need and, on average, say “it now takes over 10 years to find the right treatment for depression, with GPs correctly diagnosing it in fewer than 50% of cases”.

Traditional tools for diagnosis of conditions like depression and anxiety rely on a patient booking in to see a GP because they feel in themselves they have a problem, but using games technology and AI gives thymia the opportunity to find symptoms of mental health conditions, as you would with inspection of the body for physical health.

“Depression can be thought of as a systematic difference in the way our brain functions that is exhibited through cognitive patterns, behavioural patterns and also physiological symptoms,” says thymia co-founder, Molimpakis. On thymia, “games are played on the patient’s smartphone, using the front-facing video camera.” This “can signal when a patient is exhibiting symptoms that are linked to the behavioural patterns of someone with depression”.

Nobody at thymia will ever see videos of the people playing their diagnostic games, only data that informs them about microexpressions, eye gaze, reaction times, memory, voice tone and pitch, and emotional cues. After several successful rounds of funding the company has now developed two main products, one for clinical symptoms and one for wellness, which looks at indicators of “burnout, stress, distress, tiredness and confidence”.

Machine learning makes it possible for the team to look at data from thousands of individuals to quickly identify themes of conditions like ADHD. In identifying patterns that typically show someone is suffering, the person can then get the professional help they need.

Putting data at the heart of wellness

With new methods and focus, technologists, scientists and artists today are designing products and experiences that help heal us, especially to plug gaps where traditional therapies and support can fall short.

Using evidence and learning, they deliberately seek to uncover what’s going on inside our bodies and minds, so we can respond better to our needs and do more of what helps us feel well.

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