Virtual reality may help cure fear of heights, study says

A virtual reality program may work atleast as well as one-on-one therapy to help people overcome afear of heights, a U.K. study suggests.

Over four weeks of sessions, scores measuring fear ofheights dropped by an average of two-thirds for volunteers whowore a virtual reality headset in anxiety-provoking situations,such as walking out on a platform over a large drop-off orrescuing a cat stuck in a tree, researchers said.

"In virtual reality, people can repeatedly enter simulationsof the everyday situations that trouble them and be guided inthe very best ways to think, feel and behave," said the study'slead author, Daniel Freeman of the University of Oxford.

"Thebeauty is that the conscious awareness that these aresimulations allows people to try things that they would be waryof in real life."

While the method might apply to other phobias as well,Freeman and his colleagues chose to experiment with fear ofheights because it is the most common phobia, with one in fivepeople saying they've experienced it at some point.

The novel aspect of the new study is that no actualtherapist was present during the sessions, just a "virtualcoach" who walked each participant through the exercises,Freeman said. The animated coach asked questions that requiredyes-or-no answers or a rating of fear level, and then respondedwith suggestions.

The study involved 100 participants. Forty nine of them wererandomly assigned to get the virtual reality therapy in six30-minute sessions. Theothersreceived no therapy fortheir fear of heights during the study period (they wereoffered the VR treatment after the study was done).

On average, participants had experienced fear of heights for30 years. To be included, they had to score between 30 and 55 onan acrophobia questionnaire, indicating a moderate fear ofheights, or between 56 and 80, indicating severe fear.

As reported in The Lancet Psychiatry, at the end of thetreatment period, half of the volunteers who got the VRtreatment had scores at least 25 points lower than at theoutset, while the group that didn't get the treatment had littlechange in their scores.

Programs like this might work well as a first step togetting people over their phobias, said Robert Hudak, apsychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center inPennsylvania. "I could conceive of someone with fear of flyingusing virtual reality to get to the point where they couldactually fly on a plane," said Hudak, who was not involved inthe study.

"I don't think anyone is advocating this in place of atherapist, but it could be used as a step in many people'streatment. With any kind of therapy patients are supposed to dohomework. If they were doing a virtual reality program, thenthey'd be doing their homework," Hudak said.

"When you're working with an individual with anxiety youwant to help them face the things they're afraid of: that'scalled exposure therapy," said LynnBufka, a clinicalpsychologist and associate executive director for practice,research and policy at the American Psychological Association inWashington.

Virtual reality therapy is not yet widely available, saidBufka, who wasn't involved in the study. But with advances intechnology making the programs more and more realistic, she cansee it expanding. "It could help a lot of people," she said.