Behavioral Therapy for Phobias Using Immersive Virtual Reality Technology

Abstract

Mental disorders are difficult to diagnose and treat. Global economic growth, changing social organizations, and urban conditions affect mental health resulting in increased costs, limited benefits, and fewer facilities for behavioral treatment. Virtual reality-based behavioral treatments for mental illness offer benefits to supplement conventional therapies. Virtual Reality Treatment (VRT) let patients confront phobias using a virtual environment with a therapist. A therapist observes and coaches the patient through increasingly difficult levels of confrontation to desensitize patient phobias. This research presents a generic framework and discusses the related behavioral therapy. A VRT for confronting fear of spiders is the case used for the technology development and data collection processes which establish the basis for future clinical trials and analysis. The preliminary trial of the arachnophobia VRT platform with eight scenario levels has produced accurate bio-feedback results. The system demonstrates promise for rapid VRT application development for clinical behavioral psychotherapy.