Can VR treat fears and phobias?

Question 1

phobia

Answer 1

strong and irrational fear of something; a type of anxiety disorder.

VR allows you to put on a headset and escape into a completely different world. … we’ll be hearing about some of the ways VR is tackling serious problems like domestic violence, and helping people overcome phobias .

People who use VR often describe the experience as intense. Putting on the headset makes you feel you’re really there, in whatever new world you’ve chosen. And it’s this intensity that inventors, scientists and therapists are using to help people overcome their problems.

Question 2

simulation

Answer 2

pretend copy of something that looks real but is not real.

Even though you’re consciously aware it’s a simulation, it doesn’t stop all your habitual reactions to heights happening, and that’s really important, and that’s why it’s got such a potential to be therapeutic.
Although the VR experience seems real, the person using it knows it’s only a simulation …

Question 3

habitual

Answer 3

the usual, typical way something works.

Even though you’re consciously aware it’s a simulation, it doesn’t stop all your habitual reactions to heights happening, and that’s really important, and that’s why it’s got such a potential to be therapeutic.
But although it’s simulated, the experience is real enough to trick your mind into acting in its habitual way …

Question 4

drop your defences

Answer 4

relax and trust people by lowering the psychological barriers you have built up to protect yourself.

Even though you’re consciously aware it’s a simulation, it doesn’t stop all your habitual reactions to heights happening, and that’s really important, and that’s why it’s got such a potential to be therapeutic. The art of successful therapy, and what you can do really, really well in VR, is enable someone to drop those defences, and in VR a person is more able to drop them because they know there’s no real height there.

VR is so realistic that to complete the tasks you have to drop your defences, a phrase meaning to relax and trust people by lowering the psychological barriers you have built to protect yourself.

Question 5

first-person

first-person embodied perspective

Answer 5

from the perspective of someone who actually experiences an event in person.

In a virtual world we can be someone different and have a first-person embodied perspective from the point-of-view, for example, of a different person, different gender, different age.

Many of the prisoners lack empathy for their victims. ‘Virtual embodiment’ works by giving these men the experience of abuse in the first-person.

Question 6

novel

Answer 6

completely new and original; not like anything that has been experienced before.

In a virtual world we can be someone different and have a first-person embodied perspective from the point-of-view, for example, of a different person, different gender, different age. One can go through different situations and have the experience from this totally novel perspective.

In VR, the men have the insults and abuse they gave to others turned back on them. It’s a novel