Treating anxiety disorders with virtual reality exposure therapy.

Anxiety disorders characterised by avoidance are among the most prevalent mental disorders. Exposure therapy is one of the key components in cognitive-behavioural treatment (CBT) for these problems. The essence of exposure therapy consists of the patients confronting the feared situation repetitively, gradually and systematically, until their anxiety is reduced. Foa and Kozak used the concept of emotional processing to explain the fear reduction that occurs in exposure therapy. They suggested that exposure to feared stimuli allows the fear structure to be activated and the resulting anxiety reduction provides corrective information that is incompatible with the pathological elements of the fear structure. Exposure can be applied traditionally in vivo (through the confrontation with real situations, for example, presenting the patient with a real spider to treat arachnophobia) or by employing the imagination (for example, the memory of a traumatic event in treating post-traumatic stress disorder