The VEPSY UPDATED project: technical and clinical rationale.

The emergence of new shared media, such as the Internet and virtual reality are changing the ways in which people relate, communicate, and live. Health care, and in particular clinical psychology, is one of the areas that could be most dramatically reshaped by these new technologies. To exploit and understand this potential is the overall goal of the "Telemedicine and Portable Virtual Environment in Clinical Psychology"--VEPSY UPDATED--an European Community funded research project (IST-2000-25323, http://www.vepsy.com) whose specific goal is the development of different PC based virtual reality modules to be used in clinical assessment and treatment. In particular the developed modules have been using to address the following pathologies: anxiety disorders; male impotence and premature ejaculation; obesity, bulimia and binge-eating disorders. The chapter details the general technical and clinical characteristics of the developed modules.