Month: September 2016

When Pain is the Best Therapy

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/exposure-therapy/496547/

 

The Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego, for example, offers VR therapy for all manner of fears. Heights, driving, needles and blood, spiders, enclosed spaces—you name it, they treat it. First steps in traditional phobia treatment sometimes involve imagining fearful scenarios, but a patient’s mind is naturally resistant to those thoughts and will go to some lengths to avoid fleshing out terrifying visions. Virtual reality scenarios have proved useful in social phobias, wherein patients have a debilitating fear of interacting with other people.

To schedule an appointment at one of our Southern California Clinics (Sorrento Valley, La Jolla and Coronado), please contact us at:   frontoffice @ vrphobia.com

Virtual Reality Breakthroughs Save Lives

https://theamericangenius.com/tech-news/virtual-reality-breakthroughs-save-lives/

 

VARIOUS THERAPIES ARE RIPE FOR VR

Therapy is another sector that’s highly compatible with VR, particularly when it comes to phobias. Patients interested in treating their panic and anxiety disorders with exposure therapy can find a convenient solution in the technological updates VR brings to the table. The Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego employs headsets in order to “[place] the client in a computer-generated world where they ‘experience’ the various stimuli related to the phobia.”

The Center uses this method to treat specific phobias, chronic pain and other anxiety and stress-related disorders.

To schedule an appointment at our Southern California area clinics (Sorrento Valley, La Jolla or Coronado), please contact us at frontoffice @ vrphobia.com

How to Cope with Your Fears

Up to 9 percent of the U.S. population has a specific phobia, according to the APA, including claustrophobia. Few seek help. “The phobias are the most predominant anxiety disorders that there are, but most [people with] them never get any treatment,” Wilson says. Instead, they do their best to avoid the situations that scare them.

But people who seek help can overcome their fears. “This isn’t like Type 1 diabetes,” which has to be managed through life, Wilson says. Nor is it something that people can usually “just get over,” adds Brenda Wiederhold, a clinical psychologist who treats anxiety disorders at the Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego and Brussels. She says fear that’s unrelenting, excessive and irrational should drive patients to see a professional who treats anxiety. “If you’re starting to avoid things; if you know you need a medical test and you put off the MRI for a year – that’s when it’s gone from a fear to a phobia,” she says, noting that the condition typically manifests when people with a genetic predisposition for an anxiety disorder face a life stressor.

Even people whose claustrophobia-related anxiety isn’t debilitating or constant can improve with treatment. “Whether you have the disorder or you don’t have the disorder, if you have something that’s unpleasant to you, and you want to get rid of it – that’s the sign to get help,” Wilson says.