Augmented Cockroaches Treat Phobia

One of the possible medical uses for Augmented Reality (AR) is to help in the treatment of phobias.

A popular phobia treatment is exposure therapy: the patient is gradually exposed to more and more of the phobia inducing stimulus until they become accustomed to it and the fear subsides. Exposure therapy can be effective but has a number of problems, not least is the difficulty of setting up safe, controlled conditions; a picture of a spider just isn’t the same as a big black thing waving its legs in front of you!

New research published in the journal Behaviour Therapy suggests that augmented reality could be useful in controlled exposure therapy. The researchers used AR for a single session treatment of patients with cockroach phobia; “virtual cockroaches” were created and overlayed on the patients’ world view. Starting with a single, stationary insect the treatment session worked up to dozens of simulated cockroaches running around.

Results were extremely good. The paper’s authors report:

The AR exposure therapy was applied using the “one-session treatment” guidelines developed by Ost, Salkovskis, and Hellström (1991). Results showed that AR was effective at treating cockroach phobia. All participants improved significantly in all outcome measures after treatment; furthermore, the treatment gains were maintained at 3, 6, and 12-month follow-up periods.