Using Augmented Reality To Treat Cockroach Phobia

RichDiesal writes "In this blog post, I describe a new use for augmented reality — treating people for cockroach phobia. A recent paper in the academic journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking discusses a system where people suffering from cockroach phobia sit at a desk with a virtual reality headset. The headset has a camera on the front so that patients see the desk they're sitting at — but covered in cockroaches. In the study, researchers managed to elicit a fear response to virtual cockroaches similar to what would be experienced with real cockroaches. Sounds like a little slice of hell to me."

Comments

La Cucaroacha

[flyneye]

>())))))...

         

I've so-called Cockroach Phobia

[jsse]

I've got cockroach phobia when I was young chasing by a huge flying cockroach like you've seen in some cheap horror movies. It actually knocked me off and took me to its nest to feed its kids. (Ok, the nest part might be in my imagination but it was so real).

For all those years I tried to fight the phobia, say fighting them, killing them, catching them bare hand and even change my facebook profile photo to cockroach.

All in vain, I tell you what. The only thing that could help us is to find a place where no cockroach can be seen to live. I'm at peace for many years.

Now you slashdot put a large freaking photo of cockroaches in the news that broke my nerves. I need to transfer to intensive care unit for severe phobia. Thanks a bunch ass-

Re:I've so-called Cockroach Phobia

[Provocateur]

Roaches on the other hand...

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It
doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will
not stop, ever, until you are dead.

It does work

[JanneM]

Well, both flooding and gradual accomodation certainly works to get rid of a phobia (though it will tendency to return in some situations). You have to be really motivated to get rid of your phobia to even consider this kind of treatment, though, and for most sufferers (I'm one of them) their phobia just isn't bothersome or debilitating enough to go through with this.

Re:It does work

[JanneM]

Though remember that phobia is pretty much defined as an inappropriately strong aversion to something. It is not rational - when fear is rational it's not a phobia. So a phobia is a disorder; the question is just whether it is debilitating enough (or at all) that it warrants any kind of treatment. And that depends on your own lifestyle as much as on the strength of the phobia. A snake phobia, for instance, is likely no problem if you live and work in a northern city. If you work as a tropical-zone farmer on the other hand, it may well debilitate you.

Peril Sensitive sunglasses may be a better option

[jamesh]

Wouldn't it be better that as soon as the glasses detect a cockroach they 'augment reality' by becoming completely opaque?

I thought we already had LSD

[SlappyBastard]

Do we really need electricity to replace what chemistry already does so well?

Re:I thought we already had LSD

[mmaniaci]

LSD won't give you that kind of hallucination. Tree bark will move up and down a tree, grass will swirl into a sort of whirlpool, and lights will become spectral and dance like a thousand tiny ballerinas, but you won't manifest insects on your desk. Psychedelics tend to meddle with your senses to where you hear parts of what you see, and see part of what you hear. The baseline to "All Tomorrow's Parties" becomes everyone's visible heartbeat. The sunset produces a low, comforting drone that pulses with shadows cast by breezy trees. Sex becomes... well, sex on LSD is how I believe we humans came up with God.

I know your post was a joke, but misinformation about LSD is bad, m'kay. Its an absolutely beautiful drug, and if used responsibly and in good company, it can lead to some truly amazing insights and lasting happiness. I don't mean that if you take LSD you'll become Jimi Hendrix, but in the 8 hours of tripping, you will find out more about yourself than you ever thought possible. Oh, and its literally impossible to overdose, but don't take my word for it. If you must do drugs, do them responsibly!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Dangers
Don't take any drug without visiting this site: http://www.erowid.org/

Re:I thought we already had LSD

[dogmatixpsych]

You might not be able to overdose (although I'm sure someone can) but LSD does result in "bad trips" for a significant proportion of people. The psychological trauma can last for years. You cannot prevent a bad trip, they can hit people using LSD at random. LSD is not benign, no drugs are (note: "if used responsibly and in good company" - the key is that drugs are almost never used responsibly, at least illicit drugs are usually not; that's not just because they are illegal either, although that does factor in to their abuse. Alcohol is not illegal but it is abused widely; same with tobacco). Responsible use is better than irresponsible use but no use is better than any use (IMO).

Re:I thought we already had LSD

[Kilrah_il]

Too bad you didn't read your own link:

Psychosis
There are some cases of LSD inducing a psychosis in people who appeared to be healthy prior to taking LSD. In most cases, the psychosis-like reaction is of short duration, but in other cases it may be chronic.

and:

HPPD differs from flashbacks in that it is persistent and apparently entirely visual (although mood and anxiety disorders are sometimes diagnosed in the same individuals). A recent review suggests that HPPD (as defined in the DSM-IV) is rare and affects only a distinctly vulnerable subpopulation of users. However, it is possible that the prevalence of HPPD is underestimated because most of the diagnoses are applied to people who are willing to admit to their health care practitioner that they have previously used psychotropics, and presumably many people are reluctant to admit this.

And those side-effects are not dose-dependents and cannot be prevented by being "responsible".
LSD may not be as bad as other drugs, but it is not good.

Re:Peril Sensitive sunglasses may be a better opti

[raving griff]

The idea behind this sort of therapy is to confront your fears in a controlled setting. The simulation induces more and more anxiety until you tell the psychiatrist that you are anxious. It is then toned down until you are relaxed again. These therapies are typically used in conjunction with relaxation techniques in an attempt to empower the patient to relax irrational fears away.

Re:I think I'll just KEEP MY PHOBIA!!!

[wronskyMan]

Some people are afraid of what they can't see...

Actually cockroaches are quite tasty.

[hellop2]

Or, land crayfish, as they're known colloquially. Some prefer to squeeze out the poo before you pop em in your mouth. But, true connoisseurs actually suck out the poo... some say, it's the best part.

Is This A Bad Phobia To Have?

[Dunx]

Some phobias are disabling - agoraphobia, for instance, or a sufficiently developed fear of heights. Some phobias are inconvenient like fear of the number thirteen.

But fear of cockroaches? I call that healthy!

Unless your job requires you to go into cockroach-infested places and not freak out, I can't see any serious downside to cockroach phobia.

Re:Is This A Bad Phobia To Have?

[T Murphy]

It may depend on the degree of the fear. It can be understandable to be frightened of a cockroach enough to back away a few feet and search for a way to dispose of it. It would be irrational to flee the room and refuse to return without coaxing. It would be unhealthy if you then start hyperventilating and turn it into a traumatic event, complete with keeping you up at nights. It would at least be useful to tame a person's fear to a milder form if their fear takes on such an extreme case. I agree it wouldn't be necessary to try to remove the fear altogether.

How about clowns?

[kolbe]

My wife has an absolute fear and hatred for clowns, so much so that her Mother once sent her to clown school in order to try to shake the fear. Alas, I marry her and get stuck with the "fear" and cannot go anywhere or anything with our kids that might involve... clowns.

So, I have to ask if this augmented reality system might work for other fears such as this? Perhaps make it so an image of a clown appears on the faces of all that are gazed upon?

I have to wonder if it would cause more stress than cures though.

Re:How about clowns?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So, I have to ask if this augmented reality system might work for other fears such as this?

Yes. The military has been using something much like a first person shooter to treat soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.

my cockroach phobia story

[oddTodd123]

I got over my cockroach phobia pretty quickly after moving into my new house. They were coming into my house and I traced them back to the hole in the ground where the water meter is. My solution, not wanting to get too close, was to pour poison into hole. Ten minutes later my driveway, garage, and front yard were covered with dozens of stunned cockroaches that had crawled out of their makeshift cave looking for some other dark place to live, which included the firewood pile, every corner and edge of the building, and under my car tires. I had to round them up one by one (using a broom and dustpan!) and get rid of them. I collected them in a bucket, drowned them in more poison, and buried them. Not so afraid of cockroaches any more. But they still gross me out!

Re:my cockroach phobia story

[digitalhermit]

I hate cockroaches. Hate them, hate them, hate them.

  Once while working a high school construction job in the Florida Keys, I stayed in the unfinished and very *open* hotel being renovated. In the middle of the night Nature started calling so I got up and started walking down the hallway. The hallway was actually completely open to the outdoors, having only wood beams and no actual wall. At the end of the hallway was a finished wall. As I got closer I noticed something strange -- it looked like there was a curtain blowing in the wind (I have very bad eyesight and at night it's even worse). Then I got closer... When I got about five feet away it was too late. It looked like about five hundred billion cockroaches were on the wall. Then they started flying towards me. The fuckers looked like birds. I screamed. Ran 40yds in about 1 second.

So this is a construction site.. And fellow construction workers being such wonderful souls, they had a good laugh when I woke them up.

Of course the next night they decide to put a live cockroack on my face while I slept.

Fuckers.

There are better, quicker ways to phobia relief

[nido]

I once met a young woman at a late-summer outdoor gathering who twitched every so often. I looked closer, and it seemed that she didn't like bees. I inquired, and indeed, she'd been terrified of flying yellow bugs ever since she and her sister were attacked by a swarm when she was 12 years old.

It'd been 10+ years, she'd been to counseling, etc, but still no relief.

I was an amateur people-fixer then (this was 7 years ago), so I offered to help... After fumbling through a few different strategies, I remembered a certain variety of energy psychology ("acupressure for the emotions"). I walked her through that procedure. The woman felt the bee phobia as a clenching feeling around her heart (when you think about how terrible cockroaches are, where do you feel it in your body? Usually it's somewhere, some people are disconnected from such feelings).

She got rather giggly as the feeling moved out of her left arm. When it had left her body completely, I said "okay, I guess we're done now", and we went our separate ways.

She sought me out 20 or 30 minutes later: "Look, I got stung!" She was excited that her phobic response, which she suffered with for 10+ years, was gone.

Energy Psychology -- Gary Craig's Emotional Freedom Technique is the best-known -- is extremely effective. I've used it with many people since that first woman years ago, and consistently get excellent results. It doesn't fix every problem instantly, but many people find it better than anything else, and research is slowly being done.

Re:There are better, quicker ways to phobia relief

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you are and were very well-intentioned, but amateur counseling based on pop psychology is akin to amateur surgery with a shotgun.
You might consider a hobby with less potential danger like hand grenade tennis or blindfolded street racing. ;-)

Fishopolis anyone?

[iamhassi]

So this is Rivia Fishopolis but for cockroaches.

It's for Windows Mobile cellphones with cameras, and it displays what the camera sees with fish swimming around and crosshairs to shoot the fish. If you move your phone it continues to show whatever the camera sees, and the fish "move" into the path of the crosshairs.

Shame there isn't a better video of it because the game is top-notch, I've literally spun in circles trying to shoot fish. Glad to see someone's using the idea for medical purposes.

phobia? really?

[strack]

the hell its a phobia. there horrid skittering insects, usually dirty, maybe poisionous, and getting as far away from them as possible or squashing them is a entirely sane way to deal with them. theres no time to distinguish between cockroaches and other more dangerous types before stomping your foot down.

Re:In other news

[Iron Condor]

Virtual reality is virtually real.

Is it now? I seem to be getting rather mixed messages.

If it is possible to desensitize folks from strong reactions to roaches using exposure to virtual roaches, why is it somehow absurd to suggest that people are desensitized from strong reactions to violence by exposure to violence in video games? Just asking this question usually gets me modded to hell and back (usually troll or flamebait) but I've yet to see a coherent argument supporting such an odd schism. Virtual exposure to heights, desensitizes people who have aversions against height. Vitual crowds get people to be less fearful of real ones. Yet virtual exposure to bloodbaths cannot possibly desensitize people against real ones - and anybody who dares suggest otherwise must somehow be an evil video games-hater.