Anxiety Disorders: Arachnophobia

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Anxiety Disorders Arachnophobia
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Introduction

• Why was she raving on about causality?
• If we can identify some or all of the causal
  processes through experiments then we have a map
  for developing new treatments
• If a treatment is focused on processes that are
  not causal, or are of minor significance, it is a
  waste of both client/therapist time, money and
  resources

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Subject History
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Methods
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Results and Discussion
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Results

• strong evidence of anxiety reduction after 3
  months of VR treatment
• at the beginning of each new trial subject was
  anxious but with time anxiety decreases (the
  mixed reality spider)
• given a deep muscle relaxatant(?) prior to
  leaving the lab

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• her pre/post rating of an overall fear of spiders
  has drastically changed due to the
  desensitization therapy
• post treatment there are almost 30 of college
  student at or above her level of fear towards
  spiders
• - dramatic reduction in the dysfunctional
  behavior of the subject

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Absorption score motivation

• subject's absorption score (how easily she was
  captured by stimuli) was very high
• she self initiated exposure to in vivo spiders
• these both are linked to better results from VR
  treatment

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General Discussion

• first use of VR in the treatment of spider phobia
  
• follow up must be done to see if results changed
• increased self awareness means increased success
  of therapy

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Benefits of VR

• Cost efficient
• Non-threatening environment
• Not too time consuming

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Additional Thoughts

• no theory was tested in this study therefore may
  be criticized
• lab setting always effects real results are there

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• Are there any questions?