The Year in Ideas; Virtual-Reality Therapy
By Lawrence Osborne
Published: December 15, 2002
For years, sufferers of phobias have been treated by therapies that confronted them with the objects of their terror. Arachnophobes, for example, might spend hours having trained therapists introduce them to spiders; prolonged contact with the dreaded eight-leggers could lessen their irrational fear of them. But until now other phobias have proved more intractable. Take fear of flying. How many people can afford to take their shrinks with them every time they fly? Moreover, many phobias are actually examples of social anxiety, which are seemingly impossible to replicate in a therapeutic context. Perhaps now they can be. A company called Virtually Better is developing something called virtual-reality exposure therapy to recreate fearful situations, including the dreaded airline seat during takeoff.
Instead of lying on a couch in the therapist's office, you have yourself strapped to a mock airline seat. Goggles and head gear transmit images resembling those of a video game, while vibrations and sound are generated beneath your seat. Sweating with terror, but without that real life gin-and-tonic with which you usually sedate yourself, you undergo a simulated ''takeoff'' as if you really were sitting in economy class. The therapist soothingly talks you through your fears.
Virtually Better's technique can be applied to dozens of other phobias and anxieties. The patient can wander through a virtual supermarket exactly like the one he associates with debilitating anxiety attacks; he can also address crowds of intimidating luminaries, walk along the edges of tall buildings, witness a tornado's wrath, ride in a glass elevator or relive a combat-zone experience in Vietnam. Of course, virtual therapy is ideally suited to treat more common disorders, like agoraphobia and fear of heights.
It's the goggles cure, and it works: the October issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology reports that virtual-reality therapy has proved just as successful as standard exposure therapy in treating the fear of flying. Lawrence Osborne
Photo: Virtual-reality therapy (Rodney Smith)