Treating psychological and phsyical disorders with VR

Author

Hodges, Larry F. ; Anderson, Page ; Burdea, Grigore C. ; Hoffman, Hunter G. ; Rothbaum, Barbara O.

Author_Institution

Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

Volume

21

Issue

6

fYear

2001

Firstpage

25

Lastpage

33

Abstract

We present some applications that therapists have used with patients. Treating psychological disorders is one aspect of a larger application area of VR that we refer to as clinical virtual reality-the direct use of VR as a tool in treating or assessing psychological and physical disorders. Examples of clinical applications that use VR include treatment of phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder in Vietnam War veterans, eating disorders, pain distraction; and physical (stroke and orthopedic) rehabilitation. This article offers some general ideas on how clinical VR applications fundamentally differ from many other VR applications and presents three detailed examples of current clinical VR applications that have moved from the demonstration phase to actual use with patients in a clinical setting

Keywords

medical computing; patient treatment; psychology; virtual reality; clinical virtual reality; physical disorder treatment; psychological disorder treatment; Application software; Computational modeling; Management training; Medical treatment; Orthopedic surgery; Pain; Production; Psychology; Vehicles; Virtual reality;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0272-1716

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/38.963458

Filename

963458