VR Therapy Workshop with Dr. McMahon on March 17 at ADAA 2022 in Denver

Dr. McMahon will be teaching Workshop 151C - Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Phobias on Thursday, March 17, 2022 3:15 PM – 4:15 PM MT

Session Abstract : Virtual reality (VR) is one of the most exciting advances in phobia treatment because VR lets therapists provide effective, individualized, graduated exposure to optimize client acceptance and success.
VR exposure therapy (VRET) builds on past research re: effective phobia treatment and can be provided during in-office or teletherapy allowing controlled exposure experiences to be delivered even when clients are seen remotely.
The research support and rationale for VRET will be briefly reviewed. VRET will be described and illustrated with case examples. Attendees will learn two approaches to creating a VR exposure hierarchy and four ways to monitor client response to VRET.
Case examples will illustrate successful VRET with some of the most common phobias such as needle phobia, flying phobia, driving phobia.

Attendees will have the opportunity to personally experience virtual reality. Questions will be answered throughout to support active dialogue and audience engagement. The specific virtual environments (VEs) to be demonstrated will be selected by the audience to ensure clinical relevance.

Learning Objectives: 

• Explain the rationale and research support for using virtual reality for exposure when treating phobias.

• Outline a hierarchy of virtual reality exposures as part of specific phobia treatment.

• Describe two ways to evaluate client response to virtual reality exposure therapy.

For more information see the ADAA 20220 Conference website.