Virtual Reality is now being used for several therapeutic practices which give the user experiences that can help their day to day lives. Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy is for patients that mainly are diagnosed with PTSD anxiety, Attention Deficit Disorder, Acrophobia, Agoraphobia, etc. What VRET does is expose patients to virtual events that could trigger their disorder and help reduce the side effects. Over time and many rounds of exposure, the patients begin to have control over their emotions. VRET doesn’t just include visual representations of events, they include auxiliary, sensory and many more phenomena that the patient can really experience their setting.
Alternatives to Conventional Therapy
A standard session is around 45-50 minutes where the therapist is controlling the situation and will follow with brief talk therapy. This therapy is a substitute from conventional therapy where a therapist uses talk therapy coupled with prescription drugs. According to L. Anderson, “Opioids were involved in roughly 47,600 of these overdose deaths in 2017, or about 68% of all drug overdose deaths” (Anderson, 2019). Transitioning from prescription drugs to Virtual Reality to treat patients would give patients a better way to control their condition. VRET is a drug-free solution that is cost-effective and could potentially be treated at home. This would reduce the overall cost of therapy and could limit the opioid addiction growth rate. According to Anderson, there is a consistent 10.8% growth rate to opioid addiction per year. Offering drug-free treatment to patients to avoid addiction and give a healthier solution, these rates will hopefully slow to a halt.
Questions:
1. What are your thoughts of Virtual Reality Therapy? Would it work?
2. In the future, do you think this will become more of our reality? If so, how will it be used?
3. What are the negatives to transitioning to this type of therapy?
Sources:
Questions:
1. What are your thoughts of Virtual Reality Therapy? Would it work?
2. In the future, do you think this will become more of our reality? If so, how will it be used?
3. What are the negatives to transitioning to this type of therapy?
Sources:
Nick, I like the idea of VR therapy. you are begging to see it a lot more, especially in professional sports. The NBA has used it on Markelle Fultz to help him get over his shooting issues. I can see this being used in the future for sure, I think that professional sports will begin to use it more to help save their athletes from contact and get them confidence while they are recovering from injury.
ReplyDeleteSome negatives are it is not the real thing. Having shot on a virtual range and a real range, the difference was ridiculous. It is hard to substitute VR for the real thing however, I do think that it will help.
Tim, I definitely agree with you. Professional sports virtual reality therapy is a difficult therapy because as you said their is no substitute for the real thing. Also, I think Markelle Fultz's shot needs a lot more than just VR therapy to get back. In video games today, people feel like they are in the game. If a gamer falls of a high structure, they can kind of feel the sensation of doing so. This is because we have experienced falling. When dealing with virtual reality therapy, users can also feel certain things society can't provide them. In the case of people with PTSD, acrophobia, and other phobias, do you think using virtual reality therapy to treat patients safely or will it not provide a sufficient cure as in Markelle's case?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post Nick as I have never heard of virtual reality therapy and the possible positive effects it could have on humans. I think this would be useful for people, especially athletes as it would give them the option to see in first person while they recover from an injury. I think this will be useful in the future especially for athletes as it could lead to people viewing plays, the motion, etc in first person. The biggest negative I could see about this form of therapy is how it may be not useful for certain sports like baseball.
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