Virtual Reality's Role in Therapeutics and Healthcare

You're walking on China's glass bridge, you look down and you are 360 metres into the air - you tremble as you walk forward, with your fear, stress and anxiety skyrocketing. But you are still conscious. You know that you safe in the therapist's office.

Scientists hope that virtual reality therapy can go mainstream, specifically in terms of treating mental disorders and phobias e.g. acrophobia (heights) and anthropophobia (people).

The limbic sytstem, or the brain's emotional centre responds to stress factors much faster than the time taken for the  logical gates of your brain can clock in that what you are experiencing is not real, therefore VR is actually an extremely powerful tool in recreating environments of fear/stress that are identical to reality.

This approach is incorporating "exposure therapy" , which essentially goes with the saying that you should face your fears to overcome them. Although this is much easier said than done of course, especially in a live setting. However in a virtual setting, confronting fears and phobias can be easier,in terms of logistics also. For example, there are a plethora of flight simulations out with virtual reality compatability giving a near life-like experience. A flight-phobic patient can replay this simulation as many times as needed without going through the perils and expenses of actual flights.

One area of interest is with social stress - so disorders such as anxiety or OCD - situations can be simulated to ease social tensions such as going supermarket shopping, or job interviews, or speaking in front of a large crowd. A study conducted by various researchers published their findings in the British Journal of Psychiatry, showing that the use of VR therapy, compared to traditional methods, produced a drop in 33 points on the Hamilton Anxiety Scale [which rates levels of anxiety based on a multitude of clinical questions].

The other side of the coin would be that VR can be used to educate and provide experience, by training healthcare professionals in medical procedures without the obvious implications of live surgery.

Dr Emmanuel Ako, a senior cardiologist provides us with an insight into using VR for surgery:  
“When you push a wire through a diseased artery it’s not smooth,” Ako says. “There’s some resistance. And that’s programmed into the system, as is the slight resistance you feel when you make the initial puncture. In front of you they have real life x-rays to navigate, as you would use on an actual person, so you’re getting not only a visual feel, but also the tactile and haptic feel of the equipment. It’s very realistic, very high definition.”

By using this, the quality and confidence of treatment should rise dramatically. If we can get essentially wring out any uncertainties, malpractice and error through this guide without any consequences, but still getting the
But we must remember that there is an opposite side to the argument here, nothing is without its flaws.

1. The lack of an interpersonal therapeutic relationship between the patient and therapist. 
2. Patients may suffer e.g. panic attacks and epilepsy by the distressing environment they have been placed in.
3. Limited access to the VR itself , but in turn there is an increased accessibility to services e.g. due to diminished travel times [refer to the flight-phobia example] and logistics, more time is freed up elsewhere.
4. COST-BENEFIT  analysis - for example, the costliness associated with obtaining VR equipment, as well as coding and formatting the simulation - this will have a multitude of benefits as discussed above, but what about the therapists themselves? Will we be seeing losses of jobs in the near future due to rapid advancements day by day in technology? Currently the VR is being used alongisde therapists, but soon we may see the complete overtaking of them. 
5. Motion sickness and vertigo
6. Headaches due to the actual equipment itself. 

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Photograph by Oxford VR, demonstrating their program which can guide patients through their fear of heights

Oxford VR, a leading pioneer in immersive technology for mental health, states:

"We know that the most effective treatments are active: patients go into the situations they find difficult and practise more helpful ways of thinking and behaving. This is often impractical in face-to-face therapy, but easily done in VR.

We take a cognitive therapy approach, basing therapeutic techniques on a tested theoretical model of each problem. The automated therapy is therefore tailored for each condition, with its efficacy demonstrated in clinical trials.

When VR is done properly, the experience triggers the same psychological and physiological reactions as real-life situations. And that means that what people learn from the VR therapy can help them in the real world."

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Further Reading // Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/07/virtual-reality-acrophobia-paranoia-fear-of-flying-ptsd-depression-mental-health

http://oxfordvr.org/about-us/

https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2016/oct/19/virtual-reality-game-healthcare-hospitals-simulation

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/virtual-reality-therapy-has-real-life-benefits-some-mental-disorders