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. 2022 Sep 13;12(9):1236.
doi: 10.3390/brainsci12091236.

Preliminary Study of Efficacy and Safety of Self-Administered Virtual Exposure Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder vs. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Izabela Stefaniak  1 , Krzysztof Hanusz  2 , Paweł Mierzejewski  3 , Przemysław Bieńkowski  4 , Tadeusz Parnowski  5 , Sławomir Murawiec  6
Affiliations

Preliminary Study of Efficacy and Safety of Self-Administered Virtual Exposure Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder vs. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Izabela Stefaniak et al. Brain Sci. .

Abstract

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most frequent mental disorders. Exposure to virtual reality can be a solution complementing standard CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy) or can be used as an independent therapeutic tool. The study's objective was to assess the safety and efficacy of using self-administered virtual reality exposure vs. CBT and CBT with virtual exposure. We assessed the efficacy of the applied intervention with the Leibowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS). We compared three groups: CBT (n = 25), CBT + VR (n = 29), and self-administered therapy without aid of a therapist (n = 19). The results indicated that all three groups showed changes on the LSAS. The simple effect analysis showed that there were no differences between experimental conditions at T0 (session 1) and T1 (session 9) and that the only significant difference occurred at T2 (session 14). The pairwise comparisons showed that the participants in the VR condition scored higher on the LSAS score during the measurement at T2 than participants in CBT condition. Our study has several limitations. The presented initial study shows that the methods of CBT for social anxiety used so far are also effective, while the VR tool for self-therapy requires further research.

Keywords: cognitive-behavioral therapy; exposure; self-administered therapy; social anxiety disorder; virtual reality exposure.

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Conflict of interest statement

Paweł Mierzejewski, Przemysław Bieńkowski, Tadeusz Parnowski, Izabela Stefaniak, and Sławomir Murawiec were contractors hired by Tomorrow Sp. z o.o., the grant holder. Krzysztof Hanusz was an employee of Tomorrow Sp. z o.o. (2012–2018) and contractor (2019–2020).

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Participant flowchart.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale total score split by condition and measurement time. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Anxiety and Avoidance subscales of Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale scores split by condition and measurement time. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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