Virtual Reality Cognitive Behavior Therapy
Cognitive-behavior therapy is an evidence based therapy that focuses on problems in the here and now. It is generally brief and enables people to develop new and adaptive modes of thinking and behaving, enabling them to overcome the problems that brought them to psychotherapy. In Virtual Reality Cognitive Behavior Therapy (VRCBT) the client wears a "head mounted device" (HMD) that may be composed of special glasses or an encompassing helmet. The client sees various scenes in three dimensions in the HMD, hears sounds, may feel vibration, or experience various smells. What is special in VRCBT is the interactivity – the HMD has a tracker, which feeds the client's movements into a computer that in turn changes the scenes accordingly. For example, in VRCBT for flight phobia, the client walks through the terminal, enters the aircraft and sits in a seat, and looks out the virtual window. The plane's engines are turned on, the plane taxies along the runway, takes off, flies in good weather or in bad weather, and lands. The therapist is able to tailor the situation to the needs of the client. For example, if the difficulty lies in taking off, the focus of therapy is on landing and taking off. Thus, VRCBT enables maximum flexibility in tailoring the therapy, increased realism (over therapy using imagination), protection of client anonymity and a reduction in therapy costs (relative to exposures performed in the natural environment).
