ARTICLE
Virtual reality – a valuable tool to advance treatment of mental disorders
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1
Third Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Warsaw, Poland
2
Third Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Warsaw, Poland,
Submission date: 2018-06-09
Final revision date: 2018-11-14
Acceptance date: 2018-12-17
Publication date: 2019-03-24
Corresponding author
Anna Grochowska
Third Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Warsaw, Poland
Arch Psych Psych 2019;21(1):65-73
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ABSTRACT
The human-computer interactions are a new path of treatment in healthcare. Virtual Reality technology is one of interesting examples of a digital tool that can be used for the treatment of mental disorders. It may be useful to improve some personal competences or to overcome one’s deficits. This paper presents the range of successful VR applications in psychiatry and psychology. VR was found to be effective in treatment of anxiety disorders, PTSD, schizophrenia, eating disorders, and substance use disorders.
The implementation of VR to the treatment of mental disorders is promising because of repetitiveness of virtual experience in particular environment. Another asset of VR is a good control of intensiveness of therapeutic stimuli that a therapist can regulate. Moreover, the VR session can be individualized for each patient and it may be adapted to personal preferences and needs. VR meets a requirement of subject’s impression of “being here and now” during the session. It is also an engaging method of training for patients who do not want to participate in the conventional techniques training.
Recently, VR implementation became more available and acknowledged, however, there are still some limitations for its broader use in the sector of mental health. The most significant one is the fact that VR software designing, as well as VR hardware devices are still too expensive for mass adoption.