Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a chronic disorder characterized by very long term lasting anxiety and worry about non-specific life events, objects and situations.
If you suffer from GAD, you will often feel afraid and worry about your health, your financial circumstances, your social life, employment or education. When challenged, your fear is usually unrealistic and out of proportion with the reality of the situation. GAD also leads you to anticipate failure and catastrophe to the point that it can severely disrupt the daily flow of your life/work balance.
Conventional psychotherapy usually plays a major role in helping patients overcome their social anxiety disorder including CBT, visualisation and exposure therapy. Breathing exercises and relaxation techniques are often used as part of the treatment as well.
However, this has proven difficult in the past as many people are reluctant to address their fears in the real world and will take possible every step to avoid confrontation with any anxiety-inducing triggers.
At the VRIT clinic, we use virtual reality immersive therapy to build a safe and measured environment to gradually expose you to situations that would normally have initiated a generalised anxiety response. Under the guidance of our trained therapists, you will learn how to understand and readjust your response over time to ultimately improve your quality of life and achieve your goals.
Evidence is growing to support that VRIT is particularly well-suited for treating generalised anxiety quickly and effectively. Real-time exposure is complex and expensive, and the process can rarely be repeated consistently. That is why until now psychotherapists have relied on imagination exposure, although it is also ineffective as it depends on each person’s ability to imagine the relevant situation.
Virtual reality enables the psychotherapist to offer a safe environment while providing a realistic and accessible experience within the treatment room. At the VRIT clinic, our therapists combine VR with other innovations, such as bio-feedback, to design the most effective treatment programme for you.