Treating Phobias With Virtual Reality Stimulus Exposure

More than 19 million people in the United States alone suffer from specific phobias, and exposure therapy is the best way to help patients overcome them. Many never seek therapy but for those who do, psychologists have developed several strategies.

The traditional treatment for phobias is cognitive behavioral therapy in the form of two different approaches: systematic desensitization or a technique called flooding. Systematic desensitization relies on teaching the patient to use a relaxation technique that he will use while being incrementally exposed to a stimulus that causes the phobia. Successful systematic desensitization may be achieved either with a real stimulus or an imagined scenario that typically, over time, allows the phobia to dissipate. Flooding is when the patient is rapidly exposed to his or her fear.  For example, a patient suffering from aviophobia—a fear of flying—might be taken flying in a light aircraft. Both of these approaches have positive and negative attributes. For instance, flooding can be dangerous, and for this reason, it is not the best option and is seldom used. Systematic desensitization, especially when using an imagined scenario, relies on the patient’s ability to imagine his or her fears, which can be difficult for patients to perform for a variety of reasons.

A company called Psious may have come up with a better answer. Psious, founded in Spain in 2013 by Xavier Palomer and Dani Roig is a health company that has created a series of technology approaches to treat phobias. In 2015, a venture capital company, Rothenberg Ventures located in Silicon Valley, and specialized in virtual reality, invested in the Psious project. Such an investment provided the founders with the means to finish the product and scale the business and at the same time bring it to the United States.

They have created a technology platform they call PsiousToolsuite to treat specific phobias—such as aviophobia and arachnophobia, as well as anxiety disorders. 

PsiousToolsuite is actually a suite of technologies that includes augmented reality, virtual reality, and 360-degree videos. Augmented reality mixes virtual reality with the real world, displaying a computer-generated image on real objects in the users view. Virtual reality is a three-dimensional environment made up completely of computer-generated images that the user can influence. Both require the user to wear a headset that generates the images.

The advantages of virtual reality are that it does not rely on the patients’ imagination to expose them to their fears. Virtual reality also provides a realistic stimulus, but allows the therapist to have direct control over the intensity of the stimulus and to monitor the patient’s response.  Mental health professionals guide patients through virtual and live environments provided within the PsiousToolsuite and are able to customize the exposure, controlling a set of variables from the back-end of the tool.

PsiousToolsuite has been proven effective with or without additional cognitive behavior therapy and is currently in validation trials at Stanford University and the National Health System of Spain. The cost is reported to be about $300.

In a few short years, virtual reality has become a reality because of modern technology. As computers get better, so will our abilities to treat these phobias and disorders.