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A New Automated Psychological Therapy Based on a Virtual Reality Program (RV) Could Help Reduce Fear of the Heights of People Clinically Diagnosed with Acrophobia . This is demonstrated by an essay published in the scientific journal The Lancet Psychiatry, the first in which VR technology is used – which introduces the user into a virtual environment – for new psychological interventions.
Acrophobia is the most common phobia and one in five claims to have suffered throughout their lives, while one in twenty is clinically diagnosed with the disease. The experiment, conducted by Daniel Freeman of the University of Oxford (United Kingdom), employed a sample of one hundred people diagnosed with acrophobia who received no psychological therapy .
About half of the participants (49) were treated with VR software, while the other half (51) received the usual treatment. Each individual had to cover questionnaires on the severity of his acrophobia at the beginning and end of the process, and attend a control meeting four weeks after completion.
The VR therapy consisted of six half-hour sessions lasting two weeks in which, progressively, the users found themselves in complex spaces where they had to face their fear from simple tasks, like looking through a fence, walking on a floating platform or rescuing cats downloaded from a tree.
The program has a virtual coach that guides users and offers lessons to control phobia. All users who completed the RV treatment were sure that their acrophobia had been reduced and, in the follow-up session, 34 people said they did not fear of heights ; but the 51 of the other proceedings were as before.
(According to the agencies' information)
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