#06 Immersion Therapy – Part 2. – desres23.designandcommunication.net

This blog post is a continuation of the previous post #05, where I talked about the definition and explanation of various terms surrounding the topic of immersion therapy. In this second part, I want to go deeper into the advantages and disadvantages and specific use cases for these treatment methods. This will hopefully deepen my understanding of this subject and which elements are or are not important.

Advantages and disadvantages of this treatment method

As mentioned in previous blog posts, this type of therapy can be used to treat both physical and mental health problems.
As a side note, I found that the internet provides many resources when it comes to the treatment of mental health problems but less so for physical problems.
In the upcoming section, I will talk about advantages and disadvantages for both mental and physical problems, as these often times overlap and apply to both.

Let us discuss briefly what the distinct advantages of this digitized approach of therapy is, over more traditional ways.

It is a very safe and controlled environment. People can be gradually exposed to their fears/problems/anxieties. The therapist can fully control the level of exposure and also monitoring devices, e.g. for the heart rate, may be utilized to gather information. Furthermore, the patient can rest assured that they can end or pause the treatment whenever they feel overwhelmed.
Be more engaging and interactive experience. For example, compared to traditional talking treatments, the patient feel more immersed and connected to the experience. This helps with the efficiency of the treatment and can also be useful when dealing with patients with a low attention span or motivation, such as with children. Furthermore, VR is shown to be able to reduce the pain levels experienced by patients. It can help to break or alleviate a negative feedback loop caused by pain, dizziness and fatigue.
It can be time- and cost-efficient. A VR setup can be quite inexpensive and certain scenarios may be reused multiple times. Also, the treatment can easily be done in a simple room. Comparing this to e.g. treating the fear of flying where one would need to somehow simulate a flight or go flying, the ease of use becomes apparent.
The results produced by this method seem to be long-lasting and very positive according to several studies done. However, even though this sound positive, more research is needed. Most research done thus far is on phobias and PTSD, its use for other problems still needs to be thoroughly researched.
Treatment may be administered remotely. Some patients may not be able to leave their homes. VR therapy could be used to deliver training/therapy materials to patients anywhere.

Of course this type of treatment method also has disadvantages and problems, such as:

Technical aspects can prove difficult. Such as the initial setup cost, bugs, hardware problems and also the need to create programs/levels/scenarios for the specific treatment. This takes time and money.
Therapists need to be trained to utilize this tool. The adoption of VR technology as a therapy method is slow, and many mental health professionals are also not trained to work with it. This is also a problem here in Austria, where very few places (hospitals, etc.) actually work with and support it.
Patients may not feel open to this treatment approach and not accept it. Instead seeing it a simple gimmick with no real usage.

Let us talk very quickly about why exposure therapy works. There are several ways how it functions and creates positive effects:

Habituation – meaning that through exposure, people can become accustomed to their fears and decrease their reaction to the object/situations which create the fear.
Extinction – similar to habituation. Previous (negative) associations with objects/situations can be weakened or even replaced with positive emotions through exposure.
Self-efficacy – patients learn that they are strong enough to handle their fears on their own and confront them forthright.
Emotional processing – describes the process in which patients change their beliefs about objects/situations/activities/… and attach new, more realistic beliefs and emotions to them.
VR can be used to target areas in the brain responsible for pain processing and help regulate them and reduce the pain felt. For this reason, it can be used to treat several forms of chronic pains.

Summary & conclusion

Again, since this blog post is getting kind of long, I will continue and finish this subject in blog post 7 – part 3. There I will go into further detail regarding specific use cases for immersion therapy.

In this blog post, advantages and disadvantages were discussed. It is important to look at both sides and have a realistic view about this new form of therapy to be able to best use it. Furthermore, a brief overview over why this form of therapy works has been given.