Touching the future: applications of virtual reality technology to mental health concerns Online publication date: Thu, 17-Jul-2003
by Victoria Garshnek
International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management (IJHTM), Vol. 4, No. 5, 2002
Abstract: Virtual Reality (VR) systems are a computer interface that allows for the user to interact with and be immersed in a computer-generated environment. Virtual Environments (VEs) offer a human-computer interaction paradigm that allows users to be active participants within a computer-generated three dimensional virtual world. Many VR applications have emerged in the areas of education, military training, physical rehabilitation, and medicine. VR can add, delete, or emphasise details to better help clinicians perform basic functions and can provide the patient with specialised safer treatment techniques for problems that previously were expensive or impossible to treat in traditional training and therapy. For these reasons VEs have attracted much attention in clinical psychology and mental health applications. This paper reviews the history of VR systems development, their application to psychotherapy, assessment, rehabilitation and performance/learning and future trends.
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