Sep 2 2016
Virtual Reality Breakthroughs Save Lives

https://theamericangenius.com/tech-news/virtual-reality-breakthroughs-save-lives/

 

VARIOUS THERAPIES ARE RIPE FOR VR

Therapy is another sector that’s highly compatible with VR, particularly when it comes to phobias. Patients interested in treating their panic and anxiety disorders with exposure therapy can find a convenient solution in the technological updates VR brings to the table. The Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego employs headsets in order to “[place] the client in a computer-generated world where they ‘experience’ the various stimuli related to the phobia.”

The Center uses this method to treat specific phobias, chronic pain and other anxiety and stress-related disorders.

To schedule an appointment at our Southern California area clinics (Sorrento Valley, La Jolla or Coronado), please contact us at frontoffice @ vrphobia.com

Brenda Wiederhold 0 Comments
Sep 1 2016
How to Cope with Your Fears

Up to 9 percent of the U.S. population has a specific phobia, according to the APA, including claustrophobia. Few seek help. “The phobias are the most predominant anxiety disorders that there are, but most [people with] them never get any treatment,” Wilson says. Instead, they do their best to avoid the situations that scare them.

But people who seek help can overcome their fears. “This isn’t like Type 1 diabetes,” which has to be managed through life, Wilson says. Nor is it something that people can usually “just get over,” adds Brenda Wiederhold, a clinical psychologist who treats anxiety disorders at the Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego and Brussels. She says fear that’s unrelenting, excessive and irrational should drive patients to see a professional who treats anxiety. “If you’re starting to avoid things; if you know you need a medical test and you put off the MRI for a year – that’s when it’s gone from a fear to a phobia,” she says, noting that the condition typically manifests when people with a genetic predisposition for an anxiety disorder face a life stressor.

Even people whose claustrophobia-related anxiety isn’t debilitating or constant can improve with treatment. “Whether you have the disorder or you don’t have the disorder, if you have something that’s unpleasant to you, and you want to get rid of it – that’s the sign to get help,” Wilson says.

Brenda Wiederhold 0 Comments
Jul 29 2014
Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders – Press Release

Brenda K Wiederhold, President of Virtual Reality Medical Institute (Belgium) and Interactive Media Institute (California) together with Stéphane Bouchard, Professor, Université du Québec en Outaouais are pleased to announce the publication of their most recent book by Springer:  Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders.  The book is part of a series on Anxiety and Related Disorders, edited by Martin M. Antony, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology, Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. The interactive computer-generated world of virtual reality has been successful in treating phobias and other anxiety-related conditions, in part because of its distinct advantages over traditional in vivo exposure. Yet many clinicians still think of VR technology as it was in the 1990s–bulky, costly, and technically difficult–with little knowledge of its evolution toward more modern, evidence-based, practice-friendly treatment.

These updates, and their clinical usefulness, are the subject of Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders, a timely guidebook geared toward integrating up-to-date VR methods into everyday practice. Introductory material covers key virtual reality concepts, provides a brief history of VR as used in therapy for anxiety disorders, ad­dresses the concept of presence, and explains the side effects, known as cybersickness, that affect a small percentage of clients. Chapters in the book’s main section detail current techniques and review study findings for using VR in the treatment of:

 

·                     Claustrophobia.

·                     Panic disorder, agoraphobia, and driving phobia.

·                     Acrophobia and aviophobia.

·                     Arachnophobia.

·                     Social phobia.

·                     Generalized anxiety disorder and OCD.

·                     PTSD.

·                     Plus clinical guidelines for establishing a VR clinic.

 

An in-depth framework for effective (and cost-effective) therapeutic innovations for entrenched problems, Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders will find an engaged audience among psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and mental health counselors.

Please visit http://www.springer.com/psychology/book/978-1-4899-8022-9 to find out more about this new publication or to order your paper copy or eBook.

Brenda Wiederhold 0 Comments
Jul 29 2014
Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders

Dr. Brenda K Wiederhold, Executive Director of the Virtual Reality Medical Center together with Stéphane Bouchard, Professor, Université du Québec en Outaouais are pleased to announce the publication of their most recent book by Springer: Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders. The book is part of a series on Anxiety and Related Disorders, edited by Martin M. Antony, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology, Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. The interactive computer-generated world of virtual reality has been successful in treating phobias and other anxiety-related conditions, in part because of its distinct advantages over traditional in vivo exposure. Yet many clinicians still think of VR technology as it was in the 1990s–bulky, costly, and technically difficult–with little knowledge of its evolution toward more modern, evidence-based, practice-friendly treatment.

These updates, and their clinical usefulness, are the subject of Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders, a timely guidebook geared toward integrating up-to-date VR methods into everyday practice. Introductory material covers key virtual reality concepts, provides a brief history of VR as used in therapy for anxiety disorders, ad­dresses the concept of presence, and explains the side effects, known as cybersickness, that affect a small percentage of clients. Chapters in the book’s main section detail current techniques and review study findings for using VR in the treatment of:

  • Claustrophobia
  • Panic disorder, agoraphobia, and driving phobia
  • Acrophobia and aviophobia
  • Arachnophobia
  • Social phobia
  • Generalized anxiety disorder and OCD
  • PTSD
  • Plus clinical guidelines for establishing a VR clinic

An in-depth framework for effective (and cost-effective) therapeutic innovations for entrenched problems, Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders will find an engaged audience among psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and mental health counselors.

Please visit http://www.springer.com/psychology/book/978-1-4899-8022-9 to find out more about this new publication or to order your paper copy or eBook.

admin 0 Comments
Jun 14 2013
Tackling Stress Head on
Virtual Reality Medical Institute (VRMI) is a Belgian SME headquartered in the Brussels Life Science Incubator on the Catholic University’s Brussels campus in Woluwe Saint-Lambert.
For the past 15 years, the company has been using simulation technologies in three main areas:
■ To treat patients with anxiety
disorders (phobias, panic and
post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD);
■ To train both military and civilian
populations; and
■ To enhance educational
programmes.
The virtual environments VRMI constructs uniformly elicit significant physiological arousal to replicate real-world experiences. The VRMI team attributes its strength to a cadre of highly experienced medical and psychology professionals, working in tandem with technical team members and end-users. VRMI’s development concept utilises a three-pronged approach. New concepts for products are initially discussed with clinicians and technical members of the team, which include software developers, programmers, hardware integrators and computer graphic artists. After feasibility studies are completed, the team creates prototypes and obtains informed consent and IRB approvals. Following this, these new, virtual worlds are first tested on normal controls and then on study participants. With the participants’ permission, technical team members speak to them about their impressions and thoughts on how to improve the VR software. VRMI has found that most participants are interested in communicating with both clinical and
technical members of the team. In other settings, the latter rarely receive input directly from users, so this feedback is valuable for improving the design of future environments and products to more closely match
end-user needs. Since our team includes international collaborators, we are able to create culturally sensitive VR systems designed for a more diverse group of users. VRMI serves on EU grants as both a Dissemination and Exploitation Work Package Leader and a Clinical Partner, using a combined communications platform of an annual international conference, specialised workshops, a quarterly magazine, a
scientific journal, a website information portal and a social networking site to provide information and education to interested stakeholders, whether they be policymakers, funding agents, academics or interested individual citizens.
The full article can be read here: “Tackling Stress Head On_B. Wiederhold“!
Brenda Wiederhold 0 Comments