Augmented Reality's Effectiveness in Treating Phobias

 Written by Joe Stangarone

Augmented reality holds a lot of promise for the future in terms of convenience and productivity. It also stands to be very beneficial in many areas of medicine as well. Given augmented reality's immersive experience and ability to blend the real world with the virtual, the field of psychology will by no means be left out of the many benefits augmented reality has to offer.

One area of psychology in particular that may benefit from augmented reality is the treatment of phobias. Treating people with certain phobias can be a daunting task. This is especially true when it comes to dealing with phobias that involve insects or other animals. Treatment at some point will involve exposure to the phobia, and in the case of live animals, that exposure can be difficult to control. Animals, especially insects, can be very unpredictable. Because of this, therapist can run into trouble during the exposure phase of treatment - which can be a critical time for the patient's progress in overcoming their phobias. The animals may not act in the patient's best interest and there is a real element of danger for the patient in some cases. Furthermore, the exposure can involve gaining access to difficult or impossible places to reach, or the exposure sometimes may have to be in a public setting. All of which can make this portion of the treatment more difficult than it needs to be.

Fortunately, augmented reality can help mitigate all these issues, as a promising program developed by M. Carmen Juan, Mariano Alcañiz, and Carlos Monserrat at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Cristina Botella at the Universitat Jaume I and Rosa M. Baños and Belen Guerrero at the Universidad de Valencia has shown. With this program therapists were able to overlay virtual insects upon the real world. Not only were the therapists able to control the number and actions of the virtual insects, they were able to do it in the environment of their choosing with no danger introduced to the patients. This augmented reality system also holds an advantage over fully virtual reality systems because with it the patiences see their actual hands, arms and surrounding environment. Because of this, the experience of being exposed to their virtual phobias feels more real, hence advancing the treatment more efficiently.

This program holds a lot of promise for the future treatment of phobias. This was stated not only by the individuals responsible for its design, but by the patients as well. Anxiety scores were greatly lowered after the treatment, and the time needed to reduce the patient's fear was shorter than other VR experiments. Furthermore, a questionnaire filled out by all patients in the study showed that they felt completely immersed in the experience, with feelings of anxiety equal to what they would have experienced had the insects been real.

Augmented reality is a technology in its infancy and  is already showing great potential for the treatment of phobias. With this and other areas of health, it is not hard to predict that augmented reality has the potential to make the real world a better place for many people.