The “Pokémon Go” hype that drove people to the streets in large numbers in the late summer of 2016 was the first proof of the mass appeal of “augmented reality” (AR). Although the new technology (especially Zuckerberg’s Metaverse) is often rightly criticized, it does hold some opportunities for psychotherapy. For example, behavioral experiments and exposure exercises with feared stimuli (e.g., spiders, cockroaches, snakes, etc) can be conducted until habituation occurs and fear is unlearned. But how good is therapy in augmented reality compared to normal therapy in “real” reality.

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Studies (small sample only):

Albakri, G., Bouaziz, R., Alharthi, W., Kammoun, S., Al-Sarem, M., Saeed, F., & Hadwan, M. (2022). Phobia Exposure Therapy Using Virtual and Augmented Reality: A Systematic Review. Applied Sciences, 12(3), 1672.

Abate, A. F., Nappi, M., & Ricciardi, S. (2011, July). AR based environment for exposure therapy to mottephobia. In International Conference on Virtual and Mixed Reality (pp. 3-11). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Baus, O., & Bouchard, S. (2014). Moving from virtual reality exposure-based therapy to augmented reality exposure-based therapy: a review. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8, 112.

Botella, C., Pérez-Ara, M. Á., Bretón-López, J., Quero, S., García-Palacios, A., & Baños, R. M. (2016). In vivo versus augmented reality exposure in the treatment of small animal phobia: a randomized controlled trial. PloS one, 11(2), e0148237.

De Witte, N. A., Scheveneels, S., Sels, R., Debard, G., Hermans, D., & Van Daele, T. (2020). Augmenting exposure therapy: mobile augmented reality for specific phobia. Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 8.

Tsai, C. F., Yeh, S. C., Huang, Y., Wu, Z., Cui, J., & Zheng, L. (2018). The effect of augmented reality and virtual reality on inducing anxiety for exposure therapy: a comparison using heart rate variability. Journal of Healthcare Engineering, 2018