Internet-Based Telehealth System for the Treatment of Agoraphobia

Abstract

In this work that is being validated within the VEPSY project, we present a system that allows the patient to continue a psychological virtual reality treatment from his or her home PC as complementary therapy. In the consulting room, we have been using virtual therapy for panic disorder and agoraphobia treatment to expose the patient to several situations. For the complementary therapy, a structured treatment via the Internet has been prepared, which consists of several parts: an assessment protocol; a structured treatment protocol organized in several blocks (such as psychoeducation and exposure); and an outcome protocol. The same situations as in the consulting room have been selected for the exposure, but each of them has been divided into several virtual environments with specific characteristics that limit its difficulty level. The stimuli that are used at each level are controlled automatically by the system. The information of the patient is stored in a database, which is placed in a remote server using XML format and used to control which stages of the treatment he or she can access. The psychologist can limit the evolution of the patient. The virtual environments are installed in the patient's PC, and they are implemented with a mechanism that ensures that they can only be run when the patient connects to the web. The user should not have any special virtual reality hardware at home, so head rotations have been simulated with the navigation system.

The Effectiveness of Web-Based vs. Non-Web-Based Interventions: A Meta-Analysis of Behavioral Change Outcomes

“…Exemplar studies, not selected for analysis, are summarized as follows: Studies that were Web-based to Web-based intervention comparisons [ 12 - 15 ]; 2) Studies that were descriptive of the functionality of a Web site [ 16 , 17 ]; 3) Studies that were provider focused [ 18 ]; 4) Pre/post intervention studies that only assessed the Web-based intervention [ 19 - 24 ]; 5) Studies that did not provide adequate information regarding either a change in outcomes or the comparative utility/validity/reliability of the Web-based tool [ 25 - 27 ]; and 6) Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) studies [ 28 - 30 ].…”

Virtual reality exposure in the treatment of panic disorder and agoraphobia: A controlled study

“…However, we think that between sessions, exposure is useful. We have developed a compact disc that the patients can take home in order to reproduce the virtual scenarios to conduct the VRE tasks previously practiced in the consultation room (Alcañiz et al, 2003), and we are currently testing its efficacy in pilot studies.…”

A Second Life for eHealth: Prospects for the Use of 3-D Virtual Worlds in Clinical Psychology

“…First, more basic psychological research is needed in order to gain a clearer understanding of psychological, communicative, and interpersonal aspects of avatar-based interactions and of the differences between this and other interaction modes. Second, to date, there is scant encouraging data coming from traditional telepsychology applications [60-63] and online communities [39,44] and no experimental or controlled data about the therapeutic effectiveness of online virtual worlds in patients with mental health disorders. Third, 3-D virtual worlds were not created with clinical purposes in mind.…”