The techniques and strategies used in psychotherapy to help patients have been evolving a lot over the decades.
Part of this phenomenon is due to scientific research carried out during this time, which has shed light on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of different ways of treating patients; But it is also simply because the development of new technologies has made it possible to create therapeutic resources that were inconceivable until not so long ago.
The case of Virtual Reality used in psychotherapy is an example of this.: Nowadays, it is possible to take advantage of computing to generate therapeutic “training environments” that do not exist in the real world, but only in the digital world. Here we will see what are the main advantages of this form of psychological intervention.
Virtual Reality is a technological resource developed to generate digital environments with a real appearance, and can be used with a wide variety of objectives. For example, it is used both in leisure products such as video games, as well as in training programs, or in the case at hand here, psychological therapy, among other modes of use.
So that, Virtual Reality makes it possible to take advantage of the potential of new technologies to design fictitious but very realistic places, without the restrictions imposed by economics (that is, without the need to build these environments with physical material) and by the laws of nature. From this it follows that through Virtual Reality it is possible to generate events, objects and beings that cannot occur in the real world; However, in many cases precisely the opposite is sought, developing situations that are very similar to what could happen to us on Planet Earth today.
On the other hand, Virtual Reality is usually associated with complementary materials that facilitate immersion in these fictional worlds, the most popular being Virtual Reality glasses. These serve so that the entire field of vision of the person who uses this technology is occupied by what is happening in that artificially designed scenario, so that they forget about the stimuli that belong to the real world.
What are the advantages of Virtual Reality applied to psychotherapy?
As we have seen, Virtual Reality is not a technology created in itself to help people with psychological problems; However, precisely because it is very adaptable and is not limited to a single type of objective, it is the basis from which resources that are designed for psychotherapy are developed.
That is why Virtual Reality is used to develop tools designed to treat patients, especially in relation to the management of emotions and the treatment of anxiety problems. In cases like this, three-dimensional and very realistic virtual environments are designed through which the user can move and interact with the elements, whether they are stimuli that trigger phobic reactions, situations associated with work that produce stress, places that induce a state of relaxation. , etc.
Below you can see a summary of the main advantages it offers in the field of psychotherapy.
1. Adapts to various types of psychological problems
As Virtual Reality is a very adaptable digital environment in terms of what it allows to recreate and program, its use does not have to be limited to the treatment of very specific psychopathologies. With relatively little effort, resources can be created for a wide variety of problems.and even recycle some of the material for many types of patients.
2. Allows you to create not only environments, but also complete situations
Virtual reality It is not limited to generating environments understood as static places that exist within software: it also includes events, sequences of actions carried out by artificial entities in those places (for example, the flight equipment of an airplane) or that are triggered when the user performs certain actions.
3. Offers more privacy than live exposure
Since Virtual Reality can be used without leaving a room, offers more privacy than other intervention modalities in which you have to go to places where the real stimulus is in which the patient must learn to manage their emotions, and which in many cases usually consist of public spaces visible to other people.
4. Gives much greater control over variables
In procedures based on exposure to real environments, it is impossible to control everything. However, in Virtual Reality it is very easy to control such relevant variables as the weather, luminosity, noise, the size of the stimulus to be exposed to, etc.
This is one of the advantages of therapy based on Virtual Reality that is associated with the previous point, that is, the control of variables. Because everything in this environment can be adjusted to a specific purpose, It is very easy to generate situations adapted to the user’s degree of progressso that at every moment you face activities that challenge you but do not exceed your capabilities or lead you to become discouraged and throw in the towel.
6. It is associated with a lower cost
Compared to the use of elements from real-world environments, Virtual Reality entails fewer costs: there is no need to travel, it is not necessary to have co-therapists to help, it is not necessary to buy or rent physical items specific for that intervention, etc.
