Virtual Reality Therapy Implementation for Zoophobia

Abstract

Approximately 19.2 million adult Americans suffer from specific phobias, an irrational fear of a particular entity or event. Among the most common of phobias lies the fear of animals, normally called Zoophobia. Usually, when a person with Zoophobia is exposed to or even things about the animal dreaded, they will go through physical and emotional symptoms of extreme anxiety reaction, like: excessive sweating, trouble controlling muscles, dizziness, fainting, elevated heart rate, rapid and shallow breathing, etc. Some patients refuse to leave their homes in fear of encountering said animal, forcing them to become secluded. Unfortunately, many individuals do not seek treatment for their phobias, and only 20% of people who get professional help, recover completely. Therefore, the objective of this project is to provide a reasonable alternative for treating various types of Zoophobias, using virtual reality, beginning with the fear of cockroaches. To achieve said objective, a virtual world is developed using Unity, and Sweet Home 3D, and is implemented into an Oculus Rift virtual reality glasses. Patients will be transported to a house-like environment with the Oculus Rift, and gradually exposed to the cockroaches, while progressively approaching them with no real risk or further traumatization. This will be made to feel as realistic as possible to help the patient feel more at home, while helping them adjust to their fears in places where these animals are more likely to be found.

Ludic and Narrative Immersion in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy to Animal Phobias: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The existence of gradual challenges, where each task is presented only when the user feels comfortable with the level of challenge offered in the previous task, promotes feelings of competence and contributes to a minimum ludic immersion potential. All studies classified as having low ludic immersion potential had some form of difficulty variation, either adaptively based on individual anxiety levels [81] or via predefined tasks and environments with different difficulty levels [60,[66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]82].…”

“…The possibility of moving in the VRE with 6DOF alone is generally sufficient to provide a moderate sense of spatial immersion. A majority of the studies allowed a navigation with 6DOF, encompassing three degrees of rotation and three degrees of translation [68][69][70][71]73,74,[76][77][78][79][80]83,84,87].…”

“…Studies classified as having no potential for temporal immersion are those where virtual animals either have no movement or their movement is not dynamic [59,60,64,66,67,74,75]. In some cases [67,75], the animals move, which can create some tension.…”

An Overview of Specific Phobia: Etiology and Treatment

“…In fact, between 5 and 12 percent of the world's population is overly fearful of certain situations, problems or events, according to studies [2]. Technically defined as specific phobia, it is an acute fear of a specific subject or condition and a type of anxiety disorder.…”