Anxiety disorders are diagnosed when people become overreactive, disassociated, and feel emotionally unable to control feelings to the extent that their daily lifes are affected. Driving phobia is one of the widespread anxiety disorders in modern society, which cause problematic disruptions of a patient's daily activities. Exposure therapy is an approach gaining popularity for treating patients with stress disorders. Virtual reality (VR) technology allows people to interact with objects and stimuli in an immersive way. The VR for phobic therapy using indirect exposure, which can be safely discontinued or lowed in terms of intensity, is the area of research with literature published and patents granted. This research focuses on reviewing virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) literature and patents. The chapter also presents the research and development of a novel driving phobia VRET system with the detailed experiments to demonstrate the design, development, implementation, enhancement, and verification of VRET.
Onset, Timing, and Exposure Therapy of Stress Disorders: Mechanistic Insight from a Mathematical Model of Oscillating Neuroendocrine Dynamics
