Virtual Reality Revolution: Strategies for treating mental and emotional disorders

Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly gaining recognition in healthcare, especially as a treatment tool for psychological interventions. This paper reviews current advances in immersive VR-based therapies to explore different strategies designed to treat mental and emotional disorders with Virtual Reality Therapy (VRT). The study contributes to the VR community by exemplifying the application of various psychological treatment strategies in designing VR therapies, such as Cognitive-Behavioral, Distraction, Perspective-Taking and Exposure. For higher adoption of VR by clinicians, greater quality control of these strategies and well-defined user experiences are required, followed by clinical validation.