Virtual environments to cope with anxiety situations: Two case-studies

Anxiety is a growing problem in modern societies. Virtual reality has been widely adopted to treat anxiety and more severe psychological problems. We have been working on an approach that involves compelling virtual environments (VE) to treat anxiety. These VE recreate a particular situation and support in real-time the intervention of the therapist. Public domain software tools and a simple projection screen have been used. This paper describes two interactive applications that simulate VE to help people coping with particular anxiety situations. One of the applications is developed in Blender and is dedicated to the fear of talking in front of an audience; the other application is developed in OpenSim and is devoted to the fear of driving inside a tunnel.