Helping patients for over 2 decades
Helping patients for over 2 decades
Wiederhold’s clinic already uses the technology for medical therapy to help patients deal with PTSD, anxiety, phobias (like fear of flying), pain during medical procedures and chronic pain. She predicts more clinics using VR will pop-up in California and across the country within the near future.
Contact Information:
Virtual Reality Medical Center
9834 Genesee Avenue, Suite 427
La Jolla, California USA
frontoffice @ vrphobia.com
Wiederhold’s clinic already uses the technology for medical therapy to help patients deal with PTSD, anxiety, phobias (like fear of flying), pain during medical procedures and chronic pain. She predicts more clinics using VR will pop-up in California and across the country within the near future.
Contact Information:
Virtual Reality Medical Center
9834 Genesee Avenue, Suite 427
La Jolla, California USA
frontoffice @ vrphobia.com
By Irene Cruz
It always sounded like science fiction — technology that could make you feel like you’re standing on the edge of a building, walking on a balance beam, or sailing in the middle of the ocean.
But now, virtual reality technology has advanced to the point where that dream…has become a reality.
Virtual Reality headsets were one of the big-ticket items landing under Christmas trees last year, with many consumers ready to step into the 3-D gaming world. And as popular as those trendy pieces were, the entertainment industry isn’t the only place VR is striking it big in 2017.
Experts predict you’ll see more headsets in the classroom, in doctors offices treating phobias and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD], in the workplace, and on the internet bringing you to the latest news scene. Virtual Reality has been around for about three decades, but past issues — technology was too expensive, the equipment was clunky, people got motion sickness, the software wasn’t realistic — held the product back from popularity on the market.
“In the last two or three years, there has been a real frenzy about the equipment,” Dr. Skip Rizzo, a professor for USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, said. “Pretty soon, a virtual reality headset is going to be like a toaster. Everyone is going to have one. You may not use it every day, but every home will have one.”
The education field is looking into the technology as well, possibly for surgical training, combat training, and special needs classes.
“Autistic children sometimes take better to virtual reality – to computers – than they do to humans,” Dr. Brenda Wiederhold, president of Virtual Medical Center in San Diego, said. “We can train autistic children how to cross streets, how to order at a restaurant, how to behave more social appropriately.”
For full article, click here.
By Sarah C.P. Williams
An excerpt from the article:
Where avatar-based virtual realities are already being put to use is in psychiatric clinics that specialize in the treatment of phobias and anxieties. They use virtual realities to expose people to their fears in a safe manner. Scared of flying? Spend increasing amounts of time on a virtual plane to teach your brain to stay calm in the air.
Deathly afraid of spiders? A virtual room with some small creepy-crawlies might slowly help you become less terrified.
At the Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego, these kinds of therapies aren’t just theoretical; they’re carried out on patients every day. Executive director Brenda Wiederhold, also a researcher at UC San Diego, says she’s been using the technology on patients since the mid-1990s. Before that, clinicians working to calm phobias could either ask patients to visualize their fear, or use the real thing. Both have drawbacks, as only about 15 percent of the population is any good at imagining, Wiederhold says. But the virtual realities are incredibly effective.
“Our brain really doesn’t know the difference between reality and a virtual reality in a lot of cases,” she says. “If I expose you to a spider in a virtual setting, your limbic system will light up just as if you see a spider in real life.”
And once again, the participant isn’t always aware of the effect, or even what’s real or not. After experiencing a virtual airplane, Wiederhold says, she’s had patients comment that the smell of coffee as the flight attendant came down the aisle really helped immerse them in the scenario. Only there was no smell of coffee.
For full article, click here.
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.
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:
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.
