Exposure Therapies are based on the principle of exposing patients to environments that are causes of phobias in them. These exposures can be controlled by therapists using dashboards available with these Virtual Reality Applications.
Using Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET), any number of environments can be created for patients. Being very high quality in the form of graphics and spatial sounds, these environments provide highly immersive experiences to the patients. Using VR headsets, patients tend to believe they are present in a real environment. This is otherwise possible only if patients are placed in actual physical environments, which many times is either not possible or too dangerous. Moreover, physical environments cannot be controlled by therapists.
Patients need not even be present near the therapists for these therapies. VRET can be delivered online where therapists control environments and exposure while at a distant location. They can get feedback from patients using ordinary webcams.
VRET can provide any number of environments. It is certainly ineffective to expose the patients to the same environment for repeated therapy sessions. Moreover, customized environments can be created based on the requirements of patients and therapists.
The usual techniques like videos and photographs do not provide any immersive experience and hence are very less effective for therapy purposes.
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