[IERW#04] Importance of VR technology in Psychiatry

VR technology has become an indispensable technology in education, medical, and architecture as well as games. VR technology enables people to experience their virtual reality realized within a computer by using their special glasses and gloves. The use of VR in the medical field is noteworthy among the various areas. Especially, since many modern people are suffering from various mental illnesses due to fatigue and stress, psychiatric fields emphasize the importance of VR technology to treat them effectively.

In the psychiatric field, VR technology is effective in the treatment of various phobias such as claustrophobia and public speaking phobia. For example, a person who has a specific phobia is trained to be properly exposed to the fear through experience virtual reality. Such training can be effective as treating phobias because it is safe, can be stopped immediately if necessary, or can repeat the same conditions. In March 2016, Samsung Electronics carried out a campaign called "Be Fearless" in Europe and the Middle East using gear VR to alleviate phobias. It is a way to implement the VR environment, such as fear of heights and 27 patients from various countries participant the campaign. As their heart rate measurement, average fear of patients decreased by 23.6% after 2 weeks of experiment. VR technology is a vital technology for modern people because of the increase of various phobias due to extreme work stress.

A vital area of VR technology in the psychiatric field is the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a disease that feels frightened and feels trauma after experiencing events such as war, natural disaster, crime, and terrorism. Accordingly, VR technology has been treating PTSD based on the principle of prolonged-exposure therapy, which has proven to be the most effective treatment for PTSD treatment. In the past, for prolonged-exposure therapy, the patient was asked to imagine and recall the events by the doctor. However, the patient was reluctant to recall the memory .According to the NCBI study, if the patient does not visualize the memory of trauma vividly, effective therapy is difficult .This is why VR technology is effective for prolonged-exposure therapy. Instead of asking the patient to recollect his memory, ones use the virtual reality to get into the situation.

The VR technology has been applied to soldiers who have experienced trauma in the Iraq war. The soldier wears a display (HMD) on his head and enters a realistic war in Iraq.  Through a variety of options, counselors can create a variety of situations in which soldiers have caused trauma. As a result, soldiers were able to vividly imagine the war, find the cause of the trauma, and effectively treat it. Although wars are rare these days, innumerable victims are on the increase as various social crimes and terrorism. Therefore, VR technology has become a very important technology to effectively treat them.

VR technology is an essential technology to effectively treat modern people suffering from various mental illnesses by chronic fatigue and stress. Because this mental illness may cause another social crime it must be treated. In addition, it is our duty to help the innocent victims of terrorism and social crime overcome the trauma. Therefore, VR technology is a necessary technology in modern society in terms of crime prevention and effective psychiatric treatment.