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Increasing Adolescent Anxiety with VR Exposure Treatment

Exposure therapy to VR can improve anxiety treatment among adolescents

A single virtual reality exposure session helped youngsters with certain phobias experience less anxiety, according to a tiny research. Additionally, the subjects displayed physiological indicators of exposure to virtual reality. Recently, Child Psychiatry & Human Development released the article.

In a secure and supervised setting, the patient is progressively and methodically exposed to the item, circumstance, or internal experience in exposure therapy, a psychological treatment for anxiety disorders. Based on the concepts of habituation and cognitive restructuring, this treatment works by having patients repeatedly expose themselves to the thing or scenario that causes them to feel fearful, which in turn helps them think differently and lessen their fear reaction. Patients who directly address their fears instead of avoiding them see a progressive reduction in these emotions, enabling them to develop effective strategies for managing their emotional responses.

Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental diseases that affect kids and teens. It is estimated that as much as thirty percent of youth have some kind of psychological problem. If these childhood anxiety disorders are not treated, there is a greater chance that they may manifest as severe psychopathology in adulthood.

One significant drawback of exposure treatment, however, is that it may be difficult to replicate anxiety-inducing events for patients in traditional therapeutic settings. For instance, the best a typical psychotherapist can do for a youngster who hates storms is to urge them to picture themselves in a storm. This severely restricts this approach’s efficacy. The ability to generate almost any scenario or circumstance with standard VR equipment and immerse a person in it is a possible solution provided by recent advancements in immersive virtual reality (VR).

Kelsey A. Ramsey of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and her colleagues set out to investigate the potential applications of virtual reality exposure therapy in the treatment of anxiety disorders in young patients. They evaluated the approach’s therapeutic advantages, tolerability, and practicality, including its capacity to elicit physiological arousal and discomfort similar to actual exposures.

Three kids, two girls and a boy, all around 12 years old, participated in the research. Their phobias were of dogs, spiders, and storms, respectively. The latter also suffered from a phobia of storms and generalised anxiety disorder. The clinical severity of these phobias was moderate.

Utilising an HTC Vive, the Virtually Better suit, and a pair of headphones, the therapy consisted of a single VR exposure session. The therapist began the session by defining anxiety, providing an overview of exposure therapy, discussing coping mechanisms, and outlining the purpose of VR exposure. They then devised a strategy for the process of VR exposure.

The young person would next get a quick tutorial on how to use the VR headgear and controls. The youngster was led by the therapist to advance up the exposure therapy hierarchy during the next exposure session. The therapy would go to the following phase, which represents a more intense exposure, after the kid had mastered the current degree of exposure to the dreaded circumstance or item.

Children performed clinical examinations to determine the intensity of their anxiety symptoms both before and after the VR exposure therapy. Both the kids and their parents expressed satisfaction with the care they received. Using the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire, the researchers tracked any negative effects of virtual reality, such as eye strain, nausea, and weariness, and evaluated changes in skin conductance to gauge discomfort.

In a single session, all three kids were able to finish many VR exposures. They took fifty minutes on average for it. The first two kids, on the other hand, finished the whole VR exposure therapy procedure, which included 13 and 19 scenarios. After five VR exposures, the third child—the one who is afraid of dogs—quit because of a severe anxiety reaction.

Youngsters reported a few minor side effects from using VR, but they disappeared at the conclusion of the course of therapy. Parents and kids expressed satisfaction with the assistance they or the kid got. Assessments of anxiety revealed that after therapy, symptoms had decreased.

The anticipated physiological reactions and emotional suffering were both brought on by VR immersion. Signs of physiological habituation to exposures to virtual reality were seen in the subjects.

The results indicate the viability and acceptability of VR experiences and provide preliminary evidence of possible therapeutic benefits for anxious youth. The positive therapeutic impact of VR exposures, as described by the study authors, analogous with the results and clinical path of symptom reduction reported from the additional session therapeutic regimens for adolescent anxiety, although on a lesser scale.

Additionally, comparable subjective and physiological reactions to concurrent in vivo exposures were generated by VR experiences. All things considered, this indicates that virtual reality exposures have therapeutic promise for treating anxiety disorders in children and can get over many of the conventional obstacles that face in vivo exposures (such as access to and availability of exposure stimuli).

The study’s findings are limited by its single-session methodology and small size, despite its encouraging results. To completely comprehend the effectiveness and range of VR exposure therapy, further studies including bigger participant groups and longer treatment times are required.

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