Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is a form of exposure therapy that uses technology. Exposure therapy seeks to help reduce the intensity of stress responses you may have in situations, thoughts or memories that cause anxiety or fear. Lamson wrote in 1993 a book entitled Virtual Therapy, which was published in 1997, aimed mainly at explaining the anatomical, medical and therapeutic bases for the success of VRT. Since virtual reality in the field of science and medicine is so primitive and new, the costs of virtual reality equipment would be much higher than some of the traditional methods.
For example, when treating a client with a phobia of spiders, the therapist may produce virtual spiders that are significantly larger than real spiders. Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is a technology-based treatment with important implications for the treatment of phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that are difficult to treat with conventional psychological therapies and medications. Even in the early days of virtual reality, researchers quickly recognized that the technology was ideal for providing exposure therapy, in which patients were exposed to things they feared in a safe place. Most of the time, the virtual reality environment was described as immersive or non-immersive VR, virtual reality exposure therapy, or multisensory virtual reality.
Therefore, the virtual environment in which a person is immersed has included images with which a soldier can come into contact during combat, such as helicopters and jungles. While these tests have provided relatively accurate diagnostic results, advances in virtual reality therapy (VRT) have shown that these tests are not completely exhaustive. Regardless of the benefits of VR rehabilitation, equipment and resource costs for a VR setup would make it difficult to make it widespread and available to all patients, including the indigent population. These results show promising effects and help validate virtual reality therapy as an effective mode of therapy for the treatment of PTSD (McLay, et al.
Subsequently, Virtual Iraq was evaluated and improved with funding from ONR and is supported by Virtually Better, Inc. VR-based therapy systems may allow virtual scenes to be reproduced, with or without settings, to accustom the patient to such environments. These results support the use of self-directed VRET and suggest that currently available Internet-based treatments may benefit from the inclusion of virtual reality exposure tools. Virtual reality therapy has two promising potential benefits for treating patients with hemispace neglect.
The research found that VRT allows patients to achieve victory over virtual height situations that they could not face in real life, and that the gradual increase in height and danger in a virtual environment produced increasing victories and greater self-confidence in the patient who could actually face the situation in real life.
