Behavioral Therapy for Phobias Using Immersive Virtual Reality Technology

以沈浸式虛擬實境科技發展恐懼症行為療程平台

張瑞芬(Amy J. C. Trappey) ； 張力元(Charles V. Trappey) ； 張家銘(Chia-Ming Chang) ； 何玄(Usharani Hareesh Govindarajan) ； 施宣酉(Xyuan-Yu Shih) ； 蘇怡安(I-An Su) ； Nishant Gupta

《中國機械工程學刊》 41卷2期 (2020/04) Pp. 131-140

摘要

Mental disorders are difficult to diagnose and treat. Global economic growth, changing social organizations, and urban conditions affect mental health resulting in increased costs, limited benefits, and fewer facilities for behavioral treatment. Virtual reality-based behavioral treatments for mental illness offer benefits to supplement conventional therapies. Virtual Reality Treatment (VRT) let patients confront phobias using a virtual environment with a therapist. A therapist observes and coaches the patient through increasingly difficult levels of confrontation to desensitize patient phobias. This research presents a generic framework and discusses the related behavioral therapy. A VRT for confronting fear of spiders is the case used for the technology development and data collection processes which establish the basis for future clinical trials and analysis. The preliminary trial of the arachnophobia VRT platform with eight scenario levels has produced accurate bio-feedback results. The system demonstrates promise for rapid VRT application development for clinical behavioral psychotherapy.

關鍵字

Clinical virtual reality ； Behavioral therapy ； Immersive system framework ； Arachnophobia

並列摘要

本研究透過虛擬實境心理治療（VRT），讓心理醫師指導患者實施各層級的恐懼症療程。本研究提出VRT與Bio-sensor結合之沈浸式平台開發技術，以蜘蛛恐懼症VRT實驗設計為例，藉平台實作示範、測試者即時生理數據收集、分析，展現VRT沈浸式整合技術平台模組與實驗。依初步蜘蛛恐懼症VRT平台在不同情境設計（Levels 1～8）中產出之生理資訊追蹤結果，充分證實VRT對各類恐懼症快速開發與臨床療程的應用潛力。