BBC: Can VR treat fears and phobias?

We love to chat about new technology. One of our favourite topics is VR or virtual reality, and the ways it's haping life in the future. 

VR allows you to put on a headset and escape into a completely different world. In this programme, we'll be hearing about some of the ways VR is tackling serious problems like domestic violence, and helping people overcome phobias- the strong and irrational fear of something. And, of course, we'll be learning some useful related vocabulary along the way. tackle: 다루다, 싸우다, 문제를 강력히 해결하려고 하다 

People who use VR often describe the experience as intense. Putting on the headset makes you feel you're really there, in whatever new world you've chosed. And it's this intensity that inventors, scientists and therapists are using to help peple overcome their problems. 

We'll hear more soon, but first I have a question for you, Sam. One of the phobias VR can help with is the fear of heights- but what is the proper name for this psychological disorder? Is the fear of heights called:

a) alektorophobia  b) arachnohobia    or c) acrophobia?

I'll say a) alektorophobia. 

OK, Sam. We'll find out the answer at the end of the programme. 

Now, if like me, you're not very good with height, you'll be happy to know that a company called Oxford VR has designed a system to help with precisely that problem. In the safety of your own home, you put on a headset and are guided through a series of tasks moving you higher and higher off the ground. You sstart by taking an elevator to the top floor of tall building and move on harder challenges, like climbing a rope.

Daniel Freeman is a professor of clinical psychology at Oxford University. Listen as he explains how the VR experience works to BBC World Service programme, People Fixing the World. 

Even though you're consciously aware it's a simulation, it doesn't stop all your habitual reactions to heights happening, and that's really important, and that's why it's got such a potential to be therapeutic. The art of successful therapy, and what you can do really, really well in VR, is enable someone to drop those defences, and in VR a person is more able to drop them because they know there's no real height there. 

Although the VR experience seems real, the person using it knows it's only a simulation- a pretend copy of the real thing. This gives them confidence to go higher, knowing they can't really get hurt. 

But although it's simulated, the experience is real enough to trick your mind into acting in its habitual way- the way it usually, typically works. Although your brain knows you have both feet on the ground, VR is so realistic that to complete the tasks you have to drop your defences, a phrase meaning to relax and trust people by lowfering the psychological barriers you have built to protect yourself. 

Oxford VR's 'Fear of Heights' experience uses VR to put people into another world, but the next project we'll hear about taskes things even further- putting people into someone else's body.