HOW DOES THE PUBLIC VIEW VIRTUAL REALITY THERAPY?
My own research of virtual reality therapy first focused on displaying how the public views VRT. To find this out, I administered a survey that was distributed to U of M college students and students at other colleges. Thirty students took the survey. The questions and results are displayed below.
Question 1.
Question 2.
If not, virtual reality therapy (VRT) is a treatment used in psychotherapy, typically to treat phobias, PTSD, and social anxiety disorder. It is used to help patients gradually overcome their fears. Patients used a virtual immersion headset to view an artificial world similar to whatever causes them distress. Before virtual reality therapy, therapists used cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for treating these disorders, which involves speaking with patients about their thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The main difference between the two types of treatments is that with CBT, the patient must imagine the stressful environment in their head. With VRT, the patient uses a headset to view the stressful environment in front of them. Which form of therapy seems better (VRT or CBT)?
Question 3.
Please list any advantages or disadvantages you see with virtual reality therapy.
Here are some of the advantages mentioned:
Here are some of the disadvantages mentioned:
- "It allows the therapist to see first hand the patient's reaction to the stressful situation, and see what exactly triggered them."
- "Allows them to directly face their fear."
- "Patient can see it right in front of them."
- "Therapist controls level of stressful events to be seen."
- "Seems like it would be more effective because the patient is faced with as close to the difficult situation as possible."
- "It is more real than CBT."
- "Immersion in situation with controllable factors."
- "Superior visualization of phobia."
Here are some of the disadvantages mentioned:
- "Costs."
- "Patient could experience panic attacks."
- "Patient may not be willing to try it. It can cause medical issues through inducing anxiety."
- "I don't see any disadvantages because they don't need to imagine the environment in front of them before it is actually there because that just creates more stress for them."
- "Too overwhelming for the patient."
- "Expensive."
- "Visualization may be too real and cause greater patient anxiety."
This survey provides evidence for the fact that virtual reality therapy is not very well known by the public community, yet a majority of the public believes it sounds like a better treatment method over cognitive behavioral therapy. While there were some disadvantages mentioned, many of them were accounted for in the drawbacks section of this website. Additionally, those who took the survey recognized many advantages with virtual reality therapy, exemplifying its perceived prevalence over CBT by numerous college students.