Using Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy to Enhance Treatment of Anxiety Disorders: Identifying Areas of Clinical Adoption and Potential Obstacles

Summary & key facts

Researchers reviewed why a proven treatment for anxiety called exposure therapy is not used enough. They looked at obstacles that stop therapists and patients from using it. They explain how virtual reality (VR) can make exposure therapy easier, safer, and more acceptable. VR can let therapists create gradual, controlled, and immersive practice situations. The authors say VR could help more people get good treatment, and they call for more clinician training and careful development of VR tools with therapists and researchers.

Key facts:

• Exposure therapy is a proven way to treat anxiety but it is not used as much as it should be.
• The paper explored barriers that stop therapists and patients from using exposure therapy and suggested ways to reduce those barriers.
• Virtual reality exposure therapy, or VRET, lets people face fears in a controlled, immersive way that can be tailored step by step to each person.
• The authors say VRET is often easier for therapists to run and is sometimes more acceptable to patients than asking them to face real-life situations or just imagine them.
• VR tools could be scaled up to reach more patients, help with clinical assessment, and make therapist training more consistent.
• The authors recommend more continuing education for clinicians in VRET and adding VRET training to therapy training programs. They also encourage building VR apps together with software makers, experienced therapists, and researchers.

Abstract

Despite strong evidence of effectiveness, exposure therapy is an underutilized treatment for anxiety disorders at a time when effective treatment for anxiety is greatly needed. The significant worldwide prevalence and negative impact of anxiety are documented and highlight the importance of increasing therapist and patient use of effective treatment. Obstacles to the use of exposure therapy are explored and steps to lessen these obstacles are proposed. In particular, virtual reality (VR) technology is discussed as a way to increase the availability of exposure therapy. Incorporating VR in therapy can increase the ease, acceptability, and effectiveness of treatment for anxiety. VR exposure therapy (VRET) permits individualized, gradual, controlled, immersive exposure that is easy for therapists to implement and often more acceptable to patients than in vivo or imaginal exposure. VR is presented as a scalable tool that can augment access to and effectiveness of exposure therapy thus improving treatment of anxiety disorders. VR also has the potential to help with assessment and with therapist training standardization. The authors advocate for providing continuing education in VRET to practicing clinicians and including training in exposure therapy and VRET in training programs. Ongoing development of VR applications for clinical use is encouraged, especially when developed in collaboration with software developers, clinical users, therapists who are experienced in VRET, and researchers.

Topics

Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes COVID-19 and Mental Health Digital Mental Health Interventions

Categories

Applied Psychology Psychology Social Sciences

Tags

Anxiety Artificial intelligence Computer science Exposure therapy Medicine Psychiatry Virtual reality Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

Conditions & symptoms

Anxiety Anxiety or worry Chronic pain Panic