Phobia diagnosis and treatment
MOTEK Medical technology uses integrated reality exposure therapy in combination with physiological monitoring and feedback to treat specific phobias such as fear of flying, fear of driving, fear of heights, claustrophobia, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). General stress management and relaxation skills can be trained for stress-related disorders.
Virtual reality exposure therapy immerses the patient in a virtual world where they experience the various stimuli related to their phobia. The patient is engulfed in alarge screen or dome projection and subjected to surround sound receiving both visual and auditory cues. Furthermore the ground the is standing, walking or sitting on is acting as part of the environment and is able to react in 6 Degrees of freedom to any given stimuli, thus triggering also responses from the vestibular and proprioceptive systems.
After an introduction session teaching the control of automatic responses to anxiety-provoking situations, the therapist and patient collaborate to create a gradual increase of anxiety-inducing situations. In careful, controlled stages, the patient is exposed to these experiences that elicit increasingly higher levels of anxiety.
At every step, the therapist can see and hear what the patient is experiencing in the virtual world. If the level of anxiety becomes overwhelming, the patient can return to a less stressful level of treatment, or simply stop the process.