A Virtual Reality Game as a Tool for Psychotherapy With OCD Patients

A Virtual Reality Game as a Tool for Psychotherapy With OCD Patients

André R. Torrão, João Natário, Paula Saraiva Carvalho, Cláudia M. Silva, Frutuoso Silva
Copyright: © 2022 |Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/IJCICG.311834
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Abstract

The treatment of several types of obsessions/compulsions for people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders (OCD) can be done using virtual environments (VE). These people experience intrusive, unwanted thoughts that cause anxiety, which trigger intentional repetitive behaviors to decrease their anxiety. The advantage of using a VE to experience and challenge compulsions is that it allows the user to take the risk without taking a real risk as in digital games. This article presents a virtual reality serious game for OCD therapy, which will serve as a tool to expose the patients to stimuli that can trigger OCD symptoms, for example, tidying, cleaning, and checking. The game is more oriented for adolescents and younger adults because OCD usually starts to affect teenagers, accompanying them throughout adulthood, generating a very accentuated degree of disability in all areas of their lives. Despite Covid-19, a small group of specialists did a preliminary evaluation of the game, which has provided promising results on the feasibility of VR interventions for OCD in clinical practice.
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Background

The use of VR in the therapy of psychological disorders has been increasing. Safir and Wallach (2011) presented the trends and future directions for virtual reality enhanced psychotherapy, presenting an up-to-date review of these studies. They referred that the best treatment regimens for a wide range of psychological disorders are Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), and Virtual Reality CBT that has been employed for the treatment of several phobias. However, the OCD is not referred in this study.

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