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Virtual reality offers cheap treatment for everyday phobias: Aust'n study

Xinhua, October 12, 2016 Adjust font size:

A study by the University of Melbourne has revealed that the arrival of commercially available virtual reality (VR) systems could help people overcome every day phobias.

Using the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift VR systems, researchers from the University of Melbourne have proved that VR could be a means of delivering cheap and accessible mental health care such as dealing with fears of public speaking, heights and spiders.

Rudimentary VR systems, which cost thousands of dollars, have been used by medical professionals to treat patients with a phobia of flying for decades, but the new advanced cheaper systems have been used by the University of Melbourne to treat a range of phobias.

Greg Wadley, a technologist from the University of Melbourne, said that as well as offering new situations, such as putting a patient with a phobia of public speaking in front of a large crowd, the new systems can vastly improve on the realism and immersion offered by old VR technology as well as making situations more behaviorally accurate.

"So you can imagine the audience responding to things that you're saying in a realistic way," Wadley told the ABC on Wednesday.

Wadley said the technology offered the opportunity to treat patients with phobias for public speaking or of animals such as spiders with exposure therapy, whereby patients are exposed to the object or situation they have a phobia of, in a completely controlled environment for the first time.

The University of Melbourne team believe the next big step for VR is to use it in conjunction with in-person therapy sessions to treat disorders such as depression or psychosis.

Wadley said VR could visualize concepts such as mindfulness, a concept through which a person views their thoughts as being an external sense so they can observe them appearing and disappearing and thus deal with them better, rather than relying on a psychologist to explain it properly in words.

"You can actually visualize your thoughts and your emotions as thoughts that are in front of you and that you can deal with. They're not just part of you that you have no control over, they're objects that you can manipulate or deal with in some way," he said. Endit