Psychiatry Investig.  2009 Sep;6(3):115-121.

Virtual Reality for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Past and the Future

Affiliations
  • 1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.
  • 2Department of Psychiatry and Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. spr88@yuhs.ac
  • 3Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Charlotte, NC, USA.

Abstract

The use of computers, especially for virtual reality (VR), to understand, assess, and treat various mental health problems has been developed for the last decade, including application for phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficits, and schizophrenia. However, the number of VR tools addressing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is still lacking due to the heterogeneous symptoms of OCD and poor understanding of the relationship between VR and OCD. This article reviews the empirical literatures for VR tools in the future, which involve applications for both clinical work and experimental research in this area, including examining symptoms using VR according to OCD patients' individual symptoms, extending OCD research in the VR setting to also study behavioral and physiological correlations of the symptoms, and expanding the use of VR for OCD to cognitive-behavioral intervention.

Keyword

Obsessive-compulsive disorder; Virtual reality; Computer; Assessment; Treatment; Cognitive-behavioral therapy

MeSH Terms

Mental Health
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Phobic Disorders
Schizophrenia
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
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