VirtualPhobia: A Model for Virtual Therapy of Phobias

Abstract

This study proposes a tool model for phobia treatments using exposure therapy and virtual reality. The model goal is to represent a system that enables the treatment of several phobias with different techniques, through the immersion of the patient in a virtual environment with head-mounted displays, supporting the addition of new modules of techniques or phobias. The present work seeks to propose a broader and more flexible virtual therapy system and obtaining a more current solution. For the evaluation of the applicability of this model, a prototype was developed with support to the treatments of flooding, implosion, rationalization and systematic desensitization, as well as support to more than one phobia. The prototype was tested with volunteers to evaluate the levels of reality, immersion and anxiety caused to analyze the possibility of the use of this tool to support phobia treatments. At the end of this study, the results showed that the developed model is applicable, and that virtual reality has great strength when applied to human's psychology, being that 80% of the participants reported feeling afraid or having other characteristics of anxiety.