Mind games: VR as therapy
As VR worlds go, they’re not the most exciting: the participant ambles down a crowded street, steps onto a bus, walks to the edge of a diving board. Excitement isn’t the aim. New virtual-reality (VR) worlds are aiming to help those with psychological disorders such as agoraphobia (a fear of social interactions and crowded places), acrophobia (fear of heights), aquaphobia (fear of water) and claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces), by letting them inch towards a feared experience, and navigate that fear.
The aim, says Daniel Freeman, professor of clinical psychology at Oxford, is for participants to relearn safe boundaries through practice, without the use of exposure therapy, where a patient stays in a distressing situations until their anxiety levels drop.
Freeman headed a recent study on the impact of a VR program, gamechange, designed to help those with agoraphobia. For 26 weeks, 174 patients spent time in this simulated world, walking down a street, ordering a meal at a restaurant. Through five levels of difficulty, the number of virtual characters or proximity to them increased.
At the end of six weeks, these participants showed significant reductions in agoraphobic avoidance compared to a control group of 172 patients with similar symptoms who received similar care but no access to the VR program. At the end of 26 weeks, researchers found that those with severe agoraphobia had benefited the most and could attempt at least two new activities. Findings of the study, conducted in 2021, were published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry in April.
“The beauty is that the conscious awareness that these are simulations allows people to try things that they would be wary of trying in real life,” Freeman told Wknd. There are two caveats, he adds: The patient’s regular care must continue. And the VR content must be carefully curated and calibrated.
In India, the content has been a stumbling block for Kolkata clinic Sahayta (Hindi for Help). The closest thing they could find to local context was content from Spain, and it does not feel relatable, says Dr Tathagata Chatterjee, a psychiatrist and founder-director of Sahayta. “Most of the virtual avatars are white, and scenarios include chatting with a stranger at a bar.”
Still, there have been 20 takers in 18 months. Even experiences that aren’t perfectly crafted to suit the audience, Dr Chatterjee, says “do give people the confidence that if they can get over something in VR, they can get over it in the real world as well.”