High Anxiety Disorders: Virtual Therapy

For the ones who can not use medication for help, there is this new type of therapy that can help someone with their phobias. Virtual reality is a new thing that is a lot like facing their fears , but they are not actually in the presence of the phobia. Let's go back to the fear of clowns (coulrophobia) again, Say someone is completely terrified of clowns and wants to get over their fear because of the recent sightings. They would might with a behaviorist as anyone else would but ask for virtual reality for a

Individual therapy carried out over the Internet can include asynchronous methods, such as e-mail, synchronous methods, such as web-based messaging (instant messaging), chat, videoconferencing or voice-over IP (Internet phone). Virtual reality therapy and online video game therapy are two additional emerging online modalities. Online counseling may be provided as the primary treatment modality or as an adjunct to more traditional forms of mental health treatment. There are many advantages of online counseling. First of all, it provides accessibility to individuals who are disabled or housebound. Then, it is also always affordable and convenient. Internet makes mental health information more accessible. Later, people also feel comfortable while talking to friends and family about their health care issues, but may not feel the same discussing mental health

The fear of heights can sometimes leave people frozen in terror. There is large amount of evidence suggesting that virtual reality therapy has successfully helped alleviate conditions similar to PTSD. This is accomplished by slowly increasing the amount of stressors, as to not overload the patient with irrational fear. For example, with fear of heights, researchers can gradually increase the difficulty of the simulation, so that the height of the platform increases after every session. In a similar case study, 49 patients had volunteered to participate in a virtual reality treatment for their fear of flying. Results showed, “By the 6-month follow-up, 90% of treated participants had flown since completing treatment” (Anderson 2001). Effectiveness also hugely depends on plausibility and affordability. We need to consider if this treatment is convenient for

For their study, “47 undergraduate students at a Midwest university” were gathered through an online sign up process in which no demographics were collected in the study and the participants had the motivation of receiving class credit for their participation (556). Out of the 47, 2 participants were excluded from the final result due to problems with the procedure, leaving a total of 45. These individuals took part in a virtual reality simulation designed to help people overcome fear of heights. Each participant wore a specially designed set of goggles that allowed for the wearer to have a 360 degree view of the virtual environment and was given a hand-held controller to control their movements throughout the environment. The environment consisted of

By using virtual reality, VA researches can recreate a PTSD suffers traumatic memories and develop treatment based on actual experiences. Chris Crowe, PhD, a researcher and psychologist with the Atlanta VA Medical Center is enthusiastic about the process and states "We believe this has very exciting potential to treat people very quickly and in a way that makes them less vulnerable to relapse,"(VA outlines PTSD research, 2010) These types of research studies are providing veterans with a better quality of life and allotting the time researchers need for long term

Introduction: Almost everyone has an irrational fear or two—of mice, for example, or your annual dental checkup. For most people, these fears are minor. But when fears become so severe that they cause tremendous anxiety and interfere with your normal life, they’re called phobias. A phobia is an intense fear of something that, in reality, poses little or no actual danger. Common phobias and fears include closed-in places, heights, highway driving, flying insects, snakes, and needles. However, we can develop phobias of virtually anything. Most phobias develop in childhood, but they can also develop in adults. If you

The virtual field experience is designed to allow students the ability to learn and observe from professionals or specialist in their field of study. It further allows the student the ability to visualize the challenges, complexities, and some of the bias when counseling an individual with different cultural worldviews. Nonetheless because of the possibility of bias, it may or can influence psychotherapy (Pachankis, & Goldfried, 2004).

There are many psychological disorders that exist around the world, as well as countless procedures used to treat these illnesses. In several treatments, doctors employ behavioral techniques in an effort to reduce the effects of the disorder. For example, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is now being treated through the application of exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a behavioral technique where individuals are exposed to their without the possibility of a bad outcome. By doing so, a therapist can manage the retraumatization brought on by the disorder and the patient can begin to feel relieved and/or validated.

The patient is put into a simulator that may resemble a video game and is given additional accessories, such as headphones, to undergo a more vivid experience. This allows the patient to be in a safe environment while directly interacting with trauma related stressors. This environment also provides the therapist the ability to measure the patient’s physiological symptoms and provide the patient with a more private way to help treat the symptoms (Wiederhold & Weiderhold, 2010).

The pros of virtual reality outweigh the cons of virtual reality. Virtual reality help a lot of people that are lonely and giving them some help, maybe boosting their confidence or even providing them with information on how to do something like getting a date. According to the source: “ ‘A lot of people are lonely.’ Anderson admits. ‘ They want some sort of entertainment or companionship or a little bit of both.’” (Article 2, Page 8) This shows how, virtual reality can be used to help out the lonely people, the people that don't have confidence. Virtual reality is more of like a voice for the voiceless. Also, another way virtual reality shows how it has many pros, and those pros beat out the cons the following shows this from the text (My Virtual Girlfriend) : “I’ve been in a real relationship for almost a year and , in some ways, playing My Virtual Girlfriend reminded me of what my boyfriend and my early dalliances felt like.” Furthermore, both quotes support the claim of how people are struggling and disabled people, letting people believe, and it gives a pro over a con. It doesn't let people struggle, it gives people options, and you may ask how? Well, virtual reality allows you to believe that you are this, you are good at this that feeds into your mind and you begin to build your confidence to get that entertainment to go out

An important feature of behavioural therapy is its focus on current problems and behaviour, and on attempts to remove behaviour the patient finds troublesome. This contrasts greatly with psychodynamic therapy, where the focus is much more on trying to uncover unresolved conflicts from childhood (i.e. the cause of abnormal behaviour). Examples of behaviour therapy are aversion therapy and flooding. Aversion therapy is used when there are stimulus situations and associated behaviour patterns that are attractive to the client, but which the therapist and the client both regard as undesirable. This therapy involves associating such stimuli and behaviour with a very unpleasant unconditioned stimulus, such as an electric shock.

In vivo exposure to fear is when the patient is physically exposed through real-life experiences; whereas, imaginal exposure involves directing the patient to visualize the situation. Unfortunately, in vivo exposure have several disadvantages. For instance, treating aviophobia patients could be expensive and time-consuming since the patient and the therapist would need to fly on an actual airplane. Some common events that the patients are fear of can be unethical to recreate, such as a plane crash. On the other hand, imaginal exposure can be limiting. The patient might be unwilling to imagine an unpleasant occasion, or one could simply be unable to imagine the fearful event due to poor concentration, poor memories and so on.

Though putting a mentally ill person in a controlled environment, where scientists can observe he or she, while they put the patient through some sort of exercise, Doctors can receive a better understanding on how to treat the patient. Sometime the Virtual Reality experience is the treatment itself. When someone, like a veteran, has PTSD, for example, he or she can be treated with virtual reality experiences of certain memories, helping them emotionally overcome the traumatic experience. Also, V.R. technology can help social disorders by merging them into social settings that are not threatening to the person with the disorder, thus, helping make him or her to become more social. Last, a more sensitive subject, V.R. can help people overcome his or her fears by, again, showing their fears in a different way to make the fear less frightening. For example, if a person has a fear of spiders, he or she could be put into a situation that teaches his or her brain that spiders are not something to be feared, maybe be put into the spider's point of view to get a sense of what it is like to be a spider. However, Marshall talks about how some people say that it could also be used for torture, perhaps, V.R.could be used to expose terrifying scenes (like death or

Medical Applications of virtual and augmented reality: Virtual reality is an interactive simulation that makes you feel like you are somewhere you are not. It is now starting to be used in the medical field. For patients that are in pain, virtual reality can be used to make it seem like they are in a different happier place. Studies show that it has the same effectiveness level as morphine, possibly even more effective. For therapists who help people with different fears, virtual reality can help conquer the fear. For example, a virtual reality for people suffering arachnophobia allows people to experience what it is like to have spiders surrounding them. Virtual reality can also be used for surgical training. Surgeons can practice surgery without the fear of hurting or injuring an actual patient. This is helpful because if they mess up, they do not have to deal with the consequences that come from surgical mistakes. Virtual reality is a very new and upcoming idea, and in the near future it has the potential to become much more common in a healthcare

“Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), specifically exposure therapy, has garnered a great deal of empirical support in the literature for the treatment of anxiety disorders” (Gerardi et al., 2010). Exposure therapy is an established PTSD treatment (Chambless & Ollendick, 2001) and so is a benchmark for comparing other therapies (Taylor et al, 2003). “Exposure therapy typically involves the patient repeatedly confronting the feared stimulus in a graded manner, either in imagination or in vivo. Emotional processing is an essential component of exposure therapy” (Gerardi et al., 2010). “Exposure therapy in the virtual environment allows the participant to experience a sense of presence in an immersive, computer-generated, three-dimensional,