Virtual Reality as Therapeutic Tool in the Confines of Social Anxiety Disorder Treatment

In this paper, we present a study, conducted over 8 social phobic subjects, whose aim is to evaluate the efficiency and flexibility of virtual reality as a therapeutic tool in the confines of a social phobia behavioural therapeutic program. Our research protocol, accepted by the ethical commission of the cantonal hospices’ psychiatry service, is identical in content and structure for each patient. This study’s second goal is to use virtual exposure to objectively evaluate a specific parameter present in social phobia, namely eye contact avoidance, by using an eye-tracking system. Analysis of our results shows that there is a tendency to improvement in both the subjects’ feedback, under the form of answers to specific assessment scales, and eye contact avoidance. These results show that virtual reality is a promising therapeutic tool for the treatment of social phobia and demands more extensive research.