Common PC Video Games Used To Treat Phobias

NoData writes "Treating phobias with exposure therapy--gradually putting patients in fear-inducing situations, is a well-established method, even using virtual means, like VR simulators. However, now CNN is reporting on research that shows off-the-shelf PC video games can effectively treat phobias as well. Games like "Half-Life" were used to treat arachnophobia, and "Unreal Tournament" to treat acrophobia and claustrophobia."

Comments

Re:Duh!

[Lord_Dweomer]

While your comment was obviously a joke, I wonder if there will one day be software that could do just that. Not every guy can go out to the mall and approach 10 girls to build his confidence. A virtual reality dating sim might be able to help him do just that. And before someone makes a crack about my comment, realize that it is increasingly common in this day and age for boys to not feel confident enough to approach girls, so this is a real problem that needs some solutions.

No

[Sycraft-fu]

Humans, at least adult humans, aren't simple creatures. You can tell them shit like "you will die if you fall off a building" and they will believe you. They don't have to try it themselves and die (there are also other psychological blocks preventing it).

A phobia is something special. A person has an irrational fear of something. They KNOW it is irrational, but they can't help it anyways. One of my friends is arachnophobic. He knows it's stupid, I mean he's big and spiders are small. He can crush them easily. He's not afraid of other bugs, I've seen him sqish cockroaches. However he is really afraid of spiders, even fake ones. It's not something he can logic away.

Well, that means you have to resort to alternate methods of curing a phobia. You can't just rationalize it away. If you try logic with a phobic they'll AGREE with you. They KNOW they are being rational, they just can't do anything about it. So you do things like expose them to things that cause the fear, but in small amounts. Slowly they get acclimated to that (if it works) and then you continue. Eventually you can eliminate the fear (again, provided it works for them, not all treatments work on all patients).

Well eliminating the fear isn't the same thing as making them a moron. Just because you cure someone's archnophobia doesn't mean they won't know that black widows are bad news and avoid them. All you'll have done is eliminated the automatic and uncontrollable fear response.