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Computer games can treat phobiasPopular computer games like Half-Life and Unreal Tournament could provide a cheap and effective treatment for people with debilitating phobias, say Canadian computer scientists.
Specially made virtual reality (VR) equipment is already used to treat certain types of phobia. Exposing patients to the source of their pathological fear within this controlled and safe environment can be an effective therapy.
But Patrice Renaud and colleagues at the University of Quebec in Canada took the simpler approach of customising existing games to create VR worlds for a range of phobias. Tests with phobic patients showed that the games stimulated a response that could be used to perform controlled treatment.
The researchers suggest that computer games might, therefore, be a cheap and easy-to-use form of VR treatment. The whole cost of the software and hardware comes to a few hundred dollars rather than many thousands, they say. The games also provide highly realistic graphics and can be easily adapted to an individual patient's particular fears.
Exposure therapy
"The effectiveness of the inexpensive hardware and software used in this study shows that VR technology is sufficiently advanced for VR exposure therapy to move into the clinical mainstream," they write in a paper published in the journal CyberPsychology & Behaviour.
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