Bradley Hospital has conducted new research indicating that virtual reality (VR) training significantly boosts therapists' confidence in administering exposure therapy, a proven effective treatment for anxiety disorders. Despite its efficacy, many therapists remain wary of using this approach.
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Dr. Josh Kemp, a pediatric anxiety clinician and researcher at Bradley Hospital, received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health for his study. He noted that exposure therapy has shown strong results, particularly for conditions such as social anxiety, specific phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The reluctance among therapists largely mirrors the fears of their clients regarding exposure therapy. Kemp explained, "The fears that therapists hold about using exposure therapy look an awful lot like the fears that their clients have about doing exposure therapy, which is if I encounter these things, something bad could happen and I'm not sure I'm going to handle that."
To address this, Kemp and his team at the Pediatric Anxiety Research Center developed two versions of VR training. One group utilized a standard desktop setup, while another group experienced a more immersive head-mounted display. Both groups engaged with the same therapy scenarios.
Kemp described the immersive experience, stating, "When they put on the head-mounted display, what the therapists see is a virtual patient sitting in front of them in a therapy room," providing hands-on practice in guiding virtual patients through gradual exposure to their fears.
Of the 41 therapists involved in the study, all reported positive outcomes from the training. "Absolutely," Kemp affirmed, stating that both groups of therapists felt considerably more confident in their ability to deliver exposure therapy after completing the simulated training.