Prevention and Correction of Anxiety and Phobic Disorders in Adolescence Using Virtual Reality Programs

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study aimed at measuring the level of anxiety, both situational and personal, before and after a short-term exposure procedure with the use of virtual reality technology (VR). The study, subdivided into threestages with independent samples, involved 107 students of higher education, mostly in the humanities (relevant for the first two stages). The first two stages of the experiment included a series of immersions of respondents in virtual space with specialized equipment (vive helmets) and two measures, primary (before exposure) and secondary (15 or 3 minutes after leaving the virtual space). Within the study, the respondents of the experimental group were immersed in one of two virtual reality programs: 'Anxiety: no1', with an anthropomorphous female avatar (in third person), and 'Anxiety: no2' (in first person).Respondents in the control group were offered to watch a relaxation TV video similar in content to the virtual reality training programs. The psychodiagnostic research complex included methods aimed at measuring the level of anxiety, including situational and personal anxiety, as well as the current state, mood and activity of the respondents. According to the results of the study and statistical analysis using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and Wilcoxon T-test, significant differences were found between the indicators of the level of anxiety before and after the exposure procedure using virtual reality technologies for respondents with initially low and medium levels of anxiety. Similarly, significant differences were found on the scales of situational and personal anxiety for the initial "medium" and "high" anxiety groups, respectively. In the third part of the study conducted in the Chinese clinic on 43 respondents with severe depression, significant differences between the indicators of the level of anxiety, information processing speed, attentiveness, working memory and visual learning before and after the application of VR technologies of medium immersiveness (without VR helmets), with a relaxation program with an anthropomorphic female avatar (in third person), were obtained.