[Virtual reality therapy in the care management of anxiety disorders]

Virtual reality involves the creation of an interactive three-dimensional virtual world which the user can navigate. This technology is proposed for anxiety disorders as an alternative to the in vivo and imaginative exposure provided in cognitive behavioral therapy, the gold standard psychoterapeutic treatment for this pathology. According to a signifcant number of publications including meta-analysis, virtual reality therapy exposure is at least equivalent to in vivo exposure in specifc phobias, panic disorder with agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress disorder and social phobia. A fundamental feature of the virtual experience is presence, which is commonly defned as the mental experience of "being there", in the virtual world. This concept prompts us to consider virtual reality a therapy beyond exposition, more like an embodied therapy.