Immersive Virtual Reality Exposures for the Treatment of Childhood Anxiety.

Child Psychiatry Hum Dev

Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Published: November 2023

AI Article Synopsis

  • Exposure-based cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is effective for childhood anxiety but faces challenges like limited access to exposure stimuli.
  • Immersive virtual reality (VR) presents a promising, scalable way to overcome these challenges, though it hasn't been widely tested for youth with anxiety disorders.
  • A study found that VR exposure therapy was feasible and beneficial in reducing anxiety, with participants showing improvements in both physiological responses and subjective feelings of distress.

Article Abstract

Exposure-based cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) has demonstrated efficacy and is recommended as a front-line treatment for childhood anxiety. Unfortunately, challenges exist that impact the effective implementation of exposure-based CBT in clinical practice. One of the primary challenges is the accessibility and availability of exposure stimuli (e.g., spiders, storms, heights) in CBT sessions. Immersive virtual reality (VR) has shown promise as a scalable and sustainable solution to address this clinical need, but remains largely untested in youth with anxiety disorders. Here, we examine the use of VR exposures in the treatment of youth with an anxiety disorder (i.e., specific phobias). We aimed to investigate: (1) the feasibility and clinical benefit of VR exposures; (2) whether VR exposures elicit changes in physiological arousal and/or subjective distress; and (3) whether habituation serves as a mechanism across physiological and subjective outcomes for VR exposures. Three youth and their parents completed a clinical evaluation, which was followed by a one session treatment (OST) with VR exposures. Afterward, youth and parents completed clinical assessments one-week and 1-month after treatment. Immersive VR exposures were found to be feasible and demonstrated clinical benefit for reducing anxiety severity. Additionally, VR exposures elicited changes in both physiological and subjective outcomes. Finally, physiological habituation to VR exposures was observed among participants who exhibited treatment response at follow-up. Collectively, these findings demonstrate preliminary evidence that VR exposures are feasible, tolerable, and show some therapeutic benefit for treating youth with anxiety.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10578-023-01628-4DOI Listing

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