Virtual Therapy Offers Real Relief
Virtual reality is proving to be an effective treatment for a variety of social anxieties.
Virtual reality is proving to be an effective treatment for a variety of social anxieties. A study recently published in Lancet put VR therapy up against the standard of care for the treatment of agoraphobia. After six weeks of treatment, the study found that automated VR therapy was just as effective as standard treatment for agoraphobia.
Automated VR therapy led to significant reductions in anxious avoidance of, and distress in, everyday situations compared with usual care alone.
This was the first large-scale, multi-site study of VR treatments. The VR therapy sessions start with an introduction to a virtual therapist who explains the process and proceeds to a set of virtual scenarios. The user is encouraged to engage with avatars in virtual scenes. The VR therapy was developed by gameChange, and was run on an HTC Vive Pro headset and Dell G5 15 5590 laptop.
Agoraphobia is just the latest in a series of conditions that have received the VR treatment. Last year, researchers at the University of Basel used VR to help patients overcome a fear of heights. In 2020, researchers studied immersive VR’s ability to diagnose and treat Alzheimer’s disease.
To be clear, virtual reality is still primarily about playing video games, but there are many medical applications in the works. Behavioral disorders are on the rise and will cost the global economy $16 trillion by 2030. VR will be part of the solution.