 "Photo: Reema Dasai")
The UCF Anxiety Disorders Clinic uses new virtual reality equipment to treat people with impairing anxiety disorders.
The clinic uses head-mounted displays and other equipment to recreate virtual environments for patients to experience in a safe and controlled atmosphere.
Anxiety disorders are best treated by exposing the patient to a situation and coping with it, UCF psychology professor and clinic director Deborah Beidel said.
"Virtual reality is a new mechanism by which we can do the treatment that we know will work," Beidel said. "It allows us to expose people to things that we can't always expose them to in real life."
According to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 18.1 percent of the population. Fifteen million people suffer from social anxiety disorders.
The clinic, which is staffed by faculty and students, treats anyone with anxiety disorders, but focuses mainly on social phobias. Phobias such as the fear of public speaking, flight, heights and storms are able to be recreated in the virtual world.
Instead of going out and gathering 100 people to help a patient cope with public speaking, the clinic staff is able to recreate a live-action virtual world, Beidel said.
What the person sees through the display is not computer graphics but live videos with real actors in real environments.
To get over the fear of flying, the patient would be able to virtually walk through the airport terminal, down the ramp and onto the plane.
At any moment the staff can trigger preset scenes causing the actors to interact with the patient.
With the use of a vibrating platform, the patient will be able to feel the rumble of the engines as the plane takes off.
"An interesting thing we've noticed is that when people are in the environment, we find that people react as they would if they were in a real environment," Beidel said. "If someone [in the virtual world] on the left side of a room said something, you would see them orient to that side of the room, even though there is no real person there."
UCF is partnered with Virtually Better, the 13-year-old company that created the equipment, to develop better environments.
"Our goal is to create an environment that looks and feels so real that you forget you're in the virtual environment," Virtually Better's Director of Research and Clinical Services Josh Spitalnick said.
Virtually Better's equipment creates a full sensory experience that takes advantage of people's visual, kinetic, auditory and olfactory senses.
For instance, the system allows for full surround sound with directional audio and also has a scent machine with eight scents.
Scents often trigger certain anxieties, Spitalnick said.
Virtual reality is also being used to treat patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The UCF clinic plans on treating patients with PTSD in the future.
Along with treating people with specific anxiety disorders, the ADC conducts studies on specific anxiety disorders. The clinic is currently wrapping up a study on different methods and treatments for adults with social phobias.
A new study is also underway with children who have a social anxiety disorder called selective mutism, Beidel said.
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, selective mutism is a disorder in children marked by the inability to speak.
Virtual reality will serve as a middle-step between actually doing it in real life and not doing it at all. It is important that people think of it as a middle step instead of a last step, Beidel said.
"We know the best way is real life, and virtual reality is not real life; it's just close to real life," Beidel said. "So my concern is that people will try to use it because it's easier than going out and finding spiders or roaches to treat people with those fears. So I think people will treat it as a last-step instead of a middle-step."
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