Customer Reviews

Virtual Reality Therapy for Anxiety Disorders: Advances in Evaluation and Treatment

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As a masters student studying international law, I never thought that virtual reality, cognitive therapy, or anxiety disorders would ever be of interest to me. Once I decided to write my dissertation on Legal & Social Aspects of International Peacekeeping Forces, I focused on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and issues relating to psychiatric disorders and effects that were problematic for peacekeeping forces post-deployment. I stumbled upon this book, searching for PTSD resources, and the idea sparked my interest. The book, written by a husband and wife team (a physician and a psychologist), shows the impact of anxiety disorders, what the current treatments are, and how virtual reality can massively improve such symptoms. I was shocked at the idea, but after reading this book (which is interesting, informative, and written in a way to which a non-medical individual can relate) I was sold. Virtual reality (I focused mostly on the PTSD studies) has the ability to take an individual who suffers from PTSD and slowly recreate the incident that causes them PTSD symptoms, providing an efficient, individually paced, and easily duplicated method of cognitive-behavioral therapy in order to "relive" the incident to better manage symptoms of PTSD. This book shows a multitude of various areas to which virtual reality has improved science (e.g. anxiety disorders, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobias), which intrigues me, a person who has never studied psychology or any sort of medical science. I would recommend this book to anyone, medical minded or not, who has, in any way, a fear or phobia as well as an interest in the future of science.

As a psychologist specialising in treating anxiety, I found this book fascinating. It walks you through how to treat each type of anxiety disorder eg PTSD, driving phobia, phobias like heights and spiders etc. It is very thorough in describing how long a person should be exposed to the virtual reality environment, how to test if a person is truly appropriate for this type of treatment, and what to expect from the treatment. It also gives advice on what to do if things don't go to plan. I found this honesty very refreshing as most people will try and sell their new found item as the holy grail and tend to overlook drawbacks with their new form of therapy.
The only criticism I would have is that the book makes out that virtual reality is relatively cheap to get a basic system going. It also has a list of dealers from which you can buy from. Of this list of 12 or more dealers, only 2 are still in business. As for it being cheap, think again. I personally believe that unless you have some serious money to spend, then you are not even going to get a look in. Give it a few years and I think that VR technology will have caught up and be able to provide therapists with a much cheaper therapy tool.
So why buy this book then? I found that the book allows you to look at therapy in a completely different way, open your eyes to new possibilities. I have used VR and it is brilliant and does indeed work. It is brilliant for height phobics and people scared of flying. VR is a new and revolutionary form of treatment for anxiety offering amazing potential that would be rapid and cost effective (once the equipment is purchased). If you are an entrepreanaur, VR could be an area to look into.
The authors have done a brilliant job researching and writing this book.
Anthony Gunn
psychologist and author of Fear Is Power: Turn Your Fears Into Success

A comprehensive review a promising and rapidly expanding treatment for emotional disorders. It serves as a start for a more up to date review. The theory seems somewhat dated and needs a new edition.