More medical providers are utilizing virtual reality to treat patients with mental health disorders, and the technology has the potential to improve patient care, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
Virtual reality was first used as a form of psychological treatment in a study conducted in 1995 by clinical psychologists from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The researchers used VR to treat 20 college students diagnosed with acrophobia.
The study found the symptoms of students who completed the virtual reality treatment significantly improved at the end of the eight-week study, and those who were not treated using VR showed no improvement.
In the decades after the experiment was completed, medical professionals have primarily used VR to treat anxiety disorders, but it has also been used in cases of depression, addiction, pain, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury, stroke and more.
Though VR treatment has proven to be successful, the technology still needs further development.
A significant benefit to the use of VR technology in psychotherapy is making treatment more accessible to patients regardless of the patient's access to a real-life therapist.
"If we can actually automate and get it to people, then that's really solving one of the huge issues in mental health," Daniel Freeman, PhD, a clinical psychologist at the University of Oxford in England, told Smithsonian.