Can Virtual Reality Be Used To Effectively Treat Anxiety?
20th November 2017
By Caitlin Rutherford
Virtual reality programmes could be the next form of treatment for a multitude of anxiety related problems. From a fear of heights to social anxiety, could virtual reality really be used to treat these problems effectively?
VR works to treat anxiety and phobias by creating a scenario in which people have to face what makes them anxious without actually being put in the situation.
Liz Willits is a woman who tried the VR programme to help with her fear of heights which she said was beginning to take over her life and make her feel very tense and jumpy. After trying out the programme, which simulated her standing on a platform off of the 10th floor of a building to pick an apple from a tree, she said that it had a powerful affect and she was then able to go to the treetop adventure park Go Ape with her son.
A woman called Emily also tried out a body-swapping version of the programme to help her with her social anxiety that was making everyday interactions such as ordering coffee extremely difficult. In the simulation, Emily body swapped back and forth between a therapist and a patient to allow her to give herself advice on coping with her social anxiety.
Dr Daniel Freeman, the developer of the acrophobia programme, suggests that virtual reality is effective because “people know it’s not real so they try things they’ve not done before or for a long time, but mind and body does behave as if it’s in the real world.”
However, there are problems that would prevent virtual reality from being a good form of treatment, problems such as the fact that for Emily, knowing that it was actually her speaking made it less helpful than the traditional therapy she’s had. Clinical Psychologist Dr Nihara Krause also says that this form of treatment assumes that the person has the ability to put themselves in someone else’s position and that it assumes people have the verbal ability to be able to express something objectively. She therefore would have concerns about somebody doing it on their own.
It may be though that the advantages of the VR treatment will outweigh the problems because, as computer scientist Mel Slater argues, “We know there is a crisis in mental health and we know people have to wait a long time for appointments for things that can be fairly mild but over time become much, much, worse. And maybe this could be a stopgap before they see a real therapist.”
There is still a long way to go in the development of VR as a treatment for anxiety and phobias but the next step is for clinical trials on 100 people to be carried out. Dr Freeman hopes that the programme can be used in a clinical setting and even in people’s homes without a therapist present once it has been fully tested.
It may not be a suitable form of treatment for all people and all phobias, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction for the development of new ways to help combat the issues that affect people’s everyday lives.