Best virtual therapy

MDLive Online Therapy Review – Forbes Health

I’m a Zoom superstar when it comes to handling meetings, seminars and classes online, but the idea of talking with a psychotherapist via videoconference makes me uncomfortable. If I cried, I’d be crying all by myself in front of my laptop with no one to hand me a tissue sympathetically. And what about eye contact? Was it going to be weird staring into the close-up face of the therapist for the entire length of the session? Thanks to MDLive, I got to find out.

MDLive Online Therapy

Summary

Usability: MDLive was easy to use for sessions and matched me with a kind, empathetic therapist.
Quality of care: Although I worried initially about meeting with a therapist via video chat, it was a comfortable experience, and my therapist assured me she doesn’t tape the sessions (an MDLive policy).

Cost: MDLive keeps it simple with one set fee for psychotherapists that’s collected immediately at the end of a session. No hidden costs or add-ons, no pressure to subscribe and no upsell.

What I liked

Upfront and simple pricing (although there was a disparity between the $99 per session advertised on my first visit to the website and the $108 I was shown once I signed up.)
Instant chat help available if anything goes wrong.
Convenient and time-efficient compared to commuting to an in-person appointment.

What I didn’t like

Off-putting “waiting room” interface that makes it difficult to know your status as you wait for your therapist.
Reminder messaging was both too much and too little. I either received multiple text messages, robocalls and emails about an upcoming appointment, or nothing at all.
Every time I scheduled a new session, I had to navigate the same lengthy information entry screen and microphone and video test.

About MDLive

MDLive is a general-purpose platform for online medical help. For medical issues, you can typically confer with a doctor within an hour from the time you sign up, according to MDLive’s “Current wait time” status bar. For psychotherapy or psychiatric care, however, you may have to wait at least a week, as I did—and that was after I looked through the 55 listed therapists. In reality, there was exactly one therapist who was able to see me, and I had to wait 10 days for my first appointment.

MDLive states it’s not meant for people experiencing extreme psychiatric crises. The platform lists the specific conditions with which it can assist, such as anxiety and depression, as well as what it cannot help with, such as AD/HD, autism, and emergency situations, so anyone who’s considering using MDLive should take a careful look at the disqualifiers. It’s also not available to people outside the U.S. (including those traveling) or under the age of 10.

You can only be treated by a therapist licensed to practice in the state in which you live, so if you leave your state, you have to make sure your appointments are scheduled for once you’ve returned. The therapist will ask you at the start of the session where you are. If you’re in your home state but not in your actual home, they will ask you to give the address where you’re located.

MDLive may be a good option for you if you’re:

Struggling with post-pandemic bereavement
Having relationship or work problems
Experiencing anxiety, depression or stress
Manifesting obsessive-compulsive disorder or PTSD

Clarity of Options and Rules

It’s fairly easy to sign up for MDLive. You just need to have a credit card ready, as well as your health insurance information if you plan on using it. Live customer support representatives are standing by if you run into problems.

You need to complete a rudimentary health screener, but you can proceed to the next step even if you’re missing some information (I didn’t know my blood glucose number off the top of my head, for instance). You also need to sign a treatment agreement—be sure to download a copy and read it.

The treatment agreement you sign is brief and written in very clear language, but depending on your life situation, there could be some surprises in there if you don’t read it right away. For example, if you’re involved in a family court or other legal matter where you’re going to need a statement about your mental condition from a psychologist, MDLive will not participate.

MDLive reserves the right to charge you in full for missed appointments and cancellations made with less than 24 hours’ notice. However, when I missed my first scheduled appointment because I slept through it (that’s something sad people do, unfortunately), MDLive didn’t charge me, for which I was grateful.

Some clients using MDLive’s medical services are ultimately told to visit a practitioner in person after being charged for their virtual consultation. That can happen with the psychological services as well, although it’s less likely.

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Clarity of options and rules

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Pricing Options

MDLive keeps its pricing simple, especially for patients paying out of pocket. Psychotherapists charge $108 a visit and psychiatrists charge $284 for the initial consultation and may drop to $108 a visit after that, depending on the practitioner.

MDLive isn’t selling a subscription service nor is there an aggressive upsell for ongoing services. You may receive persistent marketing emails from MDLive after you sign up, but they are more of the friendly “did you know we also offer” type of messaging.

Communication Methods

You can talk to your therapist via videoconference through the MDLive website or the MDLive phone app. Using solely phone audio is also an option, although texting is not.

Medications

There are only a handful of states in which psychologists can prescribe medications online or otherwise. So if you’re seeing an MDLive psychologist, you will most likely not be able to get medications from them. Psychiatrists, however, can write prescriptions. MDLive charges $259 for an initial consultation with a psychiatrist.

Note that MDLive doesn’t allow its practitioners to prescribe a fairly long list of drugs, among them the Drug Enforcement Administration’s controlled substance list, which includes psychoactive medications like Ativan, Klonopin, medical marijuana and Xanax.

Therapists

Even though I had no choice of therapist (because the other 55 listed with the service were fully booked), the one who was available was perfect for me. She is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), and while that isn’t the highest degree a psychologist can achieve, I cared more about her experience and personality than her academic credentials.

As soon as I read her profile and saw her photo, I felt she would understand what I was experiencing because of her background in grief counseling. Indeed, in our 45-minute sessions, I found her to be smart and intuitive in helping me think about loss in a more positive way.

The MDLive Experience

Once I was sure I wanted to continue seeing the therapist I selected, she set up the remainder of my appointments for me—I only had to navigate the first two bookings on my own. Her availability was somewhat limited, but because my time is flexible, I was able to work around her tight schedule. (Another person might not be so fortunate, though.)

Over the course of a month with my MDLive therapist, I moved a few steps closer toward my goal of making peace with a series of deaths among my family and friends. The therapist listened in an intensely proactive way, and if I didn’t finish a thought, she would probe to find out where I was going with it initially. From week to week, she remembered the long cast of characters in my life and quickly understood the dynamics. She also seemed genuinely happy for me if I took any action that could be considered progress and would cheer me on (which could have seemed forced, but didn’t).

Final Thoughts

If you have a private area in your home where you can talk with a therapist for 45 minutes without interruption, MDLive is a good option. It’s much more time-efficient than traveling to a therapist’s office. And if you have health insurance that covers mental health treatment, it can be cost-effective as well. Just be sure to check whether your plan covers online therapy—and if it requires any particular credentials from your therapist—before you start treatment.

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how virtual spiders and aggressive avatars treat people from mental disorders

Fear of heights and spiders, post-traumatic syndrome and schizophrenia - all these mental disorders still do not have a universal treatment. Psychotherapists experiment, including with the use of modern technologies. Since the 90s, virtual reality has become one of the promising trends in the treatment of mental disorders. Cybertherapists recreate dangerous situations for patients, scenes from traumatic memories, and even give the hallucinations and voices that resound in the minds of people with schizophrenia a face. Hi-Tech translated a ScienceNews article about new methods of treating mental disorders, their effectiveness, and the impressions of patients who have completed VR therapy courses.

Read Hi-Tech at

Combating paranoia

Virtual reality therapy can be used to treat patients suffering from certain mental disorders. And cheap, user-friendly equipment has every chance of making VR therapy mainstream.

Edwin adjusted his headphones and grabbed the joystick with both hands, swallowing nervously. He has good reason to be nervous. He enters a virtual environment designed specifically to make his heart beat faster than any shooter: a cafe full of people on the monitor.

Eager to overcome his fear that other people want to hurt him, Edwin decided to take part in research into a new therapy using virtual reality. Research aims to help people with paranoia feel more comfortable in public places. In the program, featured in The Lancet in March, Edwin can try shopping or boarding a crowded bus.

The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal. One of the best known, oldest and most respected general medical journals. The Lancet was founded in 1823 by Thomas Walkley, an English surgeon who named it after the lancet, a surgical instrument. It published original research and review articles, editorials, book reviews, correspondence, news reviews, and case histories.

Virtual strangers may not be much better than real people. For Edwin, who has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, even simple errands like grocery shopping seem exhausting.

But Edwin is not alone in his struggle. Clinical psychologist Rus Pot-Calder, a researcher from the Free University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), is watching him and the game at a nearby computer. It adjusts the number of avatars and sets friendliness levels in each scene. This way Edwin can play the game at his own pace.

In one session Pot-Calder teaches Edwin to deal with his own paranoid assumptions. When Edwin saw characters with angry faces, the doctor would ask, "Why can he be angry if he doesn't want to harm you in any way?" Edwin said: "A person may be tired or have personal problems."

After three months of VR therapy, according to Edwin, it became much easier for him to go outside. "I felt more freedom inside me, I was less stressed." Edwin even recited a poem to an audience of 500 at a talent show, which he certainly would not have "dared" to do before.

Scientists have been developing virtual reality systems that help people overcome their specific phobias since the 1990s. Since then, VR therapy has become available to address more complex anxiety disorders such as social anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as anxiety associated with paranoid schizophrenia for patients like Edwin.

“A key component of effective treatment for anxiety disorders is confronting your fears,” says Stephane Bouchard, a clinical cyberpsychologist at the University of Quebec in Outaouais, Canada. He is referring to what is known as exposure therapy. With the emotional support of the therapist, it helps to reduce the patient's exposure to any fear. Patients usually face their fears in real life or, if their fear is a traumatic memory, re-experience the event in their imagination.

Psychotherapists Jacobsen and Wolpe developed a therapeutic method based on the concept of incompatibility. When two actions happen at the same time, the stronger one “wins”. In the language of behavioral therapists, this phenomenon is called reciprocal inhibition. Reciprocal inhibition therapy aims to reduce the negative behavior of the target. One of the most popular methods of exposure therapy is systematic desensitization. It is actively used for phobias, such as fear of public speaking, social phobia and others.

But confronting fears is much easier in a virtual setting. The patient can pause and rewind one session as much as he likes without actually experiencing severe shocks. Veterans with post-traumatic stress who cannot remember exactly which moment is traumatic in great detail can reuse the same VR scenario for a more powerful therapeutic experience. The same goes for those who repress their painful memories.

Until recently, the cost and complexity of VR equipment, which could run into the tens of thousands of dollars, forcedly limited the use of VR therapy. It was used only in a few research laboratories and clinics. Now there are PC headsets like the Oculus Rift that cost only a few hundred dollars, and headsets like the Samsung Gear VR that turn smartphones into virtual reality displays for around $100.

With cheaper and more user-friendly systems making virtual reality therapy accessible to many patients, researchers are testing the therapeutic capabilities of VR to treat a wider range of disorders or even completely replace the doctor.

Real sensations

The effectiveness of VR therapy comes from the fact that people automatically respond to alarms, even if they perfectly understand that this is a virtual situation. This is because the brain's emotional command center, or limbic system, reacts to stressors within milliseconds—much faster than logic kicks in. Patients who face their fears in virtual reality showed increased levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, higher heart rate and increased skin sensitivity to touch, says Barbara Rothbaum, a clinical psychologist at Emory University in Atlanta. All of these are signs of a backlash.

When Rothbaum and her colleagues began studying the treatment of psychological disorders using virtual reality systems in the early 1990s, the researchers were not sure that computer simulations would elicit such reactions. But their VR program, which sent people with a fear of heights to bridges and balconies, rode them on a glass elevator, and worked perfectly.

Rothbaum recalls the first trial of a patient. “We were so excited, and the patient herself was very nervous. We did not interfere with her reality, and it all ended with her refusal to continue the session. The patient later turned out to be susceptible to movement phobia, a problem that virtual reality has not yet been able to solve. "We thought our research was irrevocably buried at this point."

Despite everything, the Rothbaum team moved forward. The group decided to give patients a break approximately every 40 minutes in VR, optimize the room temperature, and warn nausea-prone patients not to shake their heads too much to prevent motion sickness. In this first study, published in 1995 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, ten participants showed a significant reduction in their fear of heights after seven weekly sessions of VR therapy compared to seven patients who received no therapy. Two decades later, studies have shown that VR treatments for specific phobias can allay people's fears and also have a real impact on their perception of the world around them.

More recently, researchers have developed and tested VR systems to help people with more other fears, such as social anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder. To combat social anxiety, Bouchard and his colleagues tested a VR system that allowed them to work with patients through tense social situations, such as an interview or a flat-out rejection of a pushy store clerk. The researchers gave VR therapy to 17 socially anxious people, while another 22 started conventional treatment, which included regular exercises like talking to strangers. The third group was placed on a waiting list and did not receive any therapy.

Social anxiety

Among patients with social anxiety, those treated with VR therapy improved their scores downward by an average of 33 points on an anxiety scale from 0 to 144. Anxiety among patients treated with conventional therapy decreased by about by 19 points. These improvements were recorded six months later.

Before and after 14 weekly therapy sessions, participants reported their fears and attempts to avoid social situations from 0 to 144, with higher scores indicating more severe anxiety. Starting scores averaged between 75 and 85. Participants who received VR treatment dropped an average of 33 points in their scores, while participants who trained in real life improved their scores by an average of 19 points.points. The group without treatment remained practically unchanged. These results, reported in the April 2017 British journal Psychiatry, suggest that VR therapy is at least as effective as real-world training.

In cases of providing psychological assistance to patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, things are somewhat more complicated. Their fears are much harder to imitate than to build a high-rise building or a large spider into the system. The system, which provides a wide range of prompts for PTSD patients, was created by VR therapy developer Albert Rizzo and colleagues at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She helps people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after military service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD, Vietnam syndrome, Afghan syndrome) - a severe mental condition resulting from a single or repeated traumatic situations, such as participation in hostilities, severe physical injury, sexual violence or the threat of death. In PTSD, a group of characteristic symptoms, such as psychopathological experiences, avoidance or loss of memories of traumatic events, and a high level of anxiety, persist for a month after the psychological trauma.

To experience and overcome their trauma in this VR system, the patient can first choose a setting, such as a checkpoint or a hospital. When the patient talks about their traumatic experience aloud, the therapist will set up this scene. If the patient says “I’m driving on the road,” the doctor adjusts this picture, Rizzo shares the details. If the injury occurred around noon, the therapist sets the virtual clock according to the time of the event. If the patient remembers the hum of the Humvee, then the sound “rrrr” is turned on.

HMMWV or Humvee (short for High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle) is an American army all-terrain vehicle, which is in service mainly with the US Armed Forces, as well as the armed forces, police and other services of some other countries.

Rizzo's team tested an earlier version of the system by randomly placing 162 military personnel on a waiting list, giving some of them ten therapy sessions using the Iraq/Afghanistan virtual system or ten conventional therapy sessions. For traditional treatment, doctors coached patients through their own traumatic memories, assisted patients in everyday situations that caused them to experience difficult emotions, such as in public places with a lot of people. Immediately after the study, both treatment groups also showed improvement in PTSD symptoms compared to those on the waiting list, the researchers reported in a November 2016 issue of the journal Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

More to come

Already today, scientists are testing new VR programs to help solve a range of problems:

Depression: they can be used to practice self-knowledge.
Bad habits: Helps fight cravings.
Eating disorders: will be able to change self-perception, assessment of one's body.
Stroke: helps in rehabilitation.
Medical procedures: distracts from painful procedures.
Wheelchair users: practice in orientation and motor skills training.

“Now the question is, if VR is as good as traditional therapies, which treatment should we choose and why,” says Greg Reger, clinical psychologist at the University of Washington and VA Puget Sound Health System. in Seattle.

Analyzing military personnel from a 2016 study, Reger and colleagues identified several factors: for example, young people and those not taking antidepressants showed better results in virtual reality therapy. It can be concluded that young people will be more receptive to high-tech treatments, but the researchers do not know how to explain why the use of drugs in this case would not help. Further research, such as that described by Reger in the June issue of Depression and Anxiety, may help therapists decide when it makes sense to stop a session by pulling out the headphones.

Looking into you like a mirror

For clinical psychologist Daniel Freeman of the University of Oxford, the "advantage of VR" is that it goes beyond realistic experiences. "You can do things that you can't do in real life."

For example, coaching a socially anxious patient through conversation often involves redistributing that person's attention away from the self and the environment, he says. In VR, the therapist can direct the patient's attention to specific aspects of the virtual world to help them forget their self-awareness.

Gerard Jungkyun Kim, a computer scientist at Korea University in Seoul, and his colleagues are working to create the perfect mix of real and fantasy elements to help people with panic disorder. In the new VR program, the user will be able to experience a potentially panicky situation such as being in a crowd or an overcrowded elevator. If a panic attack occurs, the user will press the "Escape" button and be transported to the beach. In this safe haven, patients are instructed to calm their breathing as they hold a heart rate monitor in their hand and see a virtual heart on the screen that beats in time with their pulse.

Seeing, hearing and feeling the beat of this virtual heart should help patients focus their attention and recognize that they can control their heart rate, says Kim. Of the five patients with panic disorder who tested the system, three reported that they found the pulse scenario useful for recovering from the panic experience.

Presented at the 2017 ACM Symposium on VR Software and Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden at the 2017 ACM Symposium on VR Software and Technology, this pilot study did not show how useful this system could be for patients with panic disorder. Kim and his colleagues are now conducting larger trials with dozens of patients.

Meeting time

While Kim's team is creating virtual versions of patients' hearts, a team in Canada is recreating virtual bodies in VR for the voices of schizophrenia patients' hallucinations.

Many people who take antipsychotics to treat schizophrenia continue to hear voices, says Alexandre Dumas, a psychiatrist at the University of Montreal. Typically, therapists advise patients to ignore these residual hallucinations, but recent research has shown that bringing voices into conversation can actually help reduce patients' feelings of helplessness.

Thus, Dumas' team built a VR system in which the patient projects an avatar that embodies an intrusive hallucinatory voice. The therapist voices it using the methods suggested by the patient and gradually makes the avatar friendlier so that the client gains confidence that he is in control of his voices.

Dumas' team tested this system, described in July in Schizophrenia Research, on 19 patients with schizophrenia. Four participants left the experiment after the first session because they either didn't like the program or found it too scary. The remaining 15 rated each session of VR therapy on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the point of greatest anxiety. The scores were checked every week. At the end of treatment, patients' scores on a scale of 0 to 20, measuring overall illness associated with the onset of hallucinations, decreased from 16.1 to 10.9.

Mind Games

Schizophrenic patients who heard voices and talked to them in VR evaluated all the terrible and disturbing provocations of six weeks of therapy sessions. Over time, patients have gradually found that the VR experience feels less stressful to them.

“At first we went too far, simulating impossible situations in VR for therapeutic purposes,” says Freeman. But as VR becomes more widespread, more researchers have the opportunity to develop new creative methods that use virtual unreality.

DIY Therapy

Avatars, useful for populating virtual cafes, can also be used as a doctor, transforming VR from a clinic-only tool to a new type of self-care. This may be especially helpful for patients who are less likely to see a psychotherapist frequently, such as those with social anxiety, agoraphobia, or those who live in remote areas without access to subspecialists.

The first fully automated VR therapy designed to combat height anxiety was featured in The Lancet in August. In this program, an animated psychotherapist guides a patient to a ten-story office building. The user performs increasingly complex tasks, from simply staying near the building to flying onto the platform above the central atrium. The virtual therapist periodically checks on how the patient is feeling and encourages him. Freeman and colleagues tested this program on 100 patients: 49were randomly selected for two weeks of treatment with VR therapy; the other 51 received no treatment.

“I thought it was just going to be a game,” said one participant in VR therapy. “But the program has changed my limited vision of what I can achieve.”

On a scale measuring fear of heights from 16 to 80, dozens of people who used the VR therapy program experienced an average drop of about 25 points after treatment. The no-treatment group remained about the same as before. While the results are encouraging, researchers don't yet know how this program competes with real therapy.

Another alternative treatment that could reduce the fear of spiders was used in the form of face-to-face confrontation. The three-hour VR program includes a demonstration of various arachnids: cartoons, spider slippers and, at the end, a realistic tarantula. Spiders crawl up to the user, and the virtual psychotherapist supports and encourages the patient.

“I'm not sure if anyone ripped off the headphones, but a lot of people definitely started crying,” says Philipp Lindner, a clinical psychologist at Stockholm University. “One patient who was virtually sitting in a living room with a lot of spiders crawling on the floor lifted his legs in the real world and froze like that for 15 minutes. ”

The researchers tested the system on 97 patients with arachnophobia and reported the results last November at the annual Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy in San Diego. Half of the volunteers were randomly selected to receive VR therapy and then helped to overcome their fear of encountering spiders in the real world. The other half completed a three-hour session of conventional exposure therapy, where participants practiced catching spiders in cups to hold in their hand.

Lindner said that before treatment, both groups of participants did not usually approach the spider in the transparent container. After treatment, participants in VR therapy could stand nearby or even pick up the container, and patients who were treated with traditional techniques could touch it.

A year later, some VR patients were also able to achieve this. Lindner suspects that the VR experience reduces patients' fears so that they themselves try to fight further without the help of gadgets, so they ended up catching up with a group that practiced in the real world.

Despite early success with specific phobias, it is unclear whether VR therapy can be used to treat more complex disorders without a therapist.

In artificially created social interactions, therapists carefully monitor the responses of virtual avatars to identify each patient's individual fears. Virtual reality therapists are not yet versatile enough to be trusted to talk uncontrollably with patients who can turn the dialogue in any direction, says Bouchard. However, he believes that virtual capabilities will eventually reach this level of sophistication. Lindner says that even if virtual therapists are up to the task, many patients won't become self-reliant enough to complete the treatment on their own. “There has been a lot of discussion about the rise of assistive smartphone apps for treating mental disorders, but very few of them have had any real-world utility.”

Motivation is not the only barrier to self-help. In some cases, self-therapy can be too traumatic. For patients using the program of personified hallucinations, "It's really hard to manage at first, because the patient hears terribly bad things from the program, like, 'You're a fool, kill yourself,'" says Dumas. “I don’t think a person can fight this alone.”

But developers shouldn't lose sight of a lot of details before their designs are tested, says Reger. These systems could make therapy, for at least some disorders, more accessible to many patients who cannot or do not want to see a human therapist. If automated treatments for complex disorders such as PTSD are found to be safe and effective. “I will definitely become a fan,” adds Reger.

Return to Iraq

Wilfredo Serrano Waters didn't know what to expect when he started VR therapy at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta. He played and watched movies on a VR headset at home, but the 34-year-old wasn't sure what would happen if he relived some of the worst memories in virtual reality. Has VR therapy helped alleviate the post-traumatic stress he has endured since his involvement in the military operations in Iraq from 2007 to 2009?

The experience was “extremely impressive,” says Serrano Waters of his two-week course. Putting on headphones and a headset, he sat in a chair on a platform that could vibrate. “If there was an explosion, you not only see and hear, but also feel it.” Serrano Waters repeated his entire traumatic experience inside and out, the therapist encouraged him to focus on thoughts and feelings in the present moment, the whole action seemed more realistic. His heart was pounding, his palms were sweaty, and his mind returned to that time.

“It was very difficult,” he says. “But that was the essence of the treatment so that I could learn to endure and manage my emotions.” The treatment also included immersion in real, everyday situations that had become problematic due to post-traumatic stress, such as prolonged exposure to crowds. “I would have to pass the time just sitting at the mall or Starbucks in the middle of my lunch hour,” he says. After finishing treatment in June, Serrano Waters said he felt less jittery and more relaxed, even in large crowds. And he was no longer so frightened by sudden noises. “The effect is definitely significant,” the man says. “I still need to work on my injury, but this is already mere trifles.”

Virtual reality treatment: how VR is currently used in medicine

30 years old. Exactly so much time has passed since researchers and experimenters began to use virtual reality in medicine.

During this period, they managed to prove that VR technology is not just a speculative futuristic concept, it can solve real problems. And as a result, it will bring invaluable benefits to both doctors and their patients. But in order not to speak abstractly, let's consider successful cases of VR developments in the healthcare sector.

Alzheimer's Help

One startup, Wayback, focused on Alzheimer's and dementia (acquired dementia). According to the latest estimates, about 50 million people in the world suffer from this disease. And that figure could rise to 132 million by 2050. Memory loss is the main problem associated with this disease.

A person forgets the meaning of words, the names of close people, important events and dates - his memories are erased. This is a very complex disease for which there is currently no cure. When someone you love is living with it, all you want is to give them back their memory, if only for a moment.

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Englishman Dan Cole, whose father is ill with Alzheimer's, together with like-minded people created a series of films in virtual reality and called the project Wayback.

Its purpose is to stimulate the brain through memorable moments of the past, awaken long-term memories in patients and evoke positive emotions.

For the first study, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 was recreated. A series of experiments have shown that VR therapy, although not able to eliminate Alzheimer's disease, allows people to regain the skill of meaningful communication, improves their emotional state, and in some cases (at the initial stage) even slows down the progress of the disease.

Virtual Heart

Stanford Lucile Packard Cardiologist David Axelrod has developed a VR heart model to visualize birth defects. The development has two practical purposes at once:

study guide for students,
visual demonstration for patients.

The heart is a complex three-dimensional organ, and it is still not fully understood by people. Ask any doctor and he will explain how difficult it is to describe what processes take place inside this organ. At the same time, without a clear understanding of the course of the operation, patients experience additional and unnecessary stress.

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So days before putting on surgical gloves to operate on a patient's heart, Stanford Children's Hospital doctors Lucile Packard prepare them for the procedure by immersing them in virtual reality.

In VR glasses, using controllers for control, they can view the heart from any angle, see how blood flows through it, where the defect is located and how it affects the work of the heart. There, at the touch of a button, they can "perform a surgical operation" and see exactly how the work of the most important organ will be restored.

In terms of student education, virtual hearts are currently being used to train pediatric cardiologists at 22 medical centers around the world. According to the results of the study, it was found that those who were trained according to the classical method, who did not use VR, showed the worst results in recognizing two dozen different cardiac disorders.

This means that VR simulation will be increasingly integrated into medical centers in the future. However, in addition to better visualization and digestibility of information, the virtual heart model has another significant advantage - it is cheaper than the plastic models used by cardiologists now.

Weapon against cancer

Several VR companies successfully help cancer patients at once. For example, Oncomfort, Start VR and KindVR have developed virtual reality applications that relieve stress in patients undergoing chemotherapy. During the procedure, they are put on virtual reality glasses and offered to travel by boat around the harbor, explore the seabed, and communicate with koalas at the zoo.

This distracting effect prevents patients from focusing on the discomfort. This method is more effective than painkillers: when using VR, the time to focus on pain decreased by 48%, while using opioids - by only 10%.

In turn, scientists from Cambridge gave hope that virtual reality will become a new weapon in the fight against cancer. They won two grants ($25.3 million each) and created three-dimensional models of breast tumors that can be viewed using virtual reality.

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This new way of studying complex medical data allows us to examine in detail each tumor cell, determine exactly which ones are malignant, consider all genetic differences, and, ultimately, look at the disease in a new way.

Because tumors are stored in cyberspace rather than under microscope slides, doctors around the world can study 3D models without having to prepare their own samples. While there is no guarantee that doctors will find new ways to treat or prevent breast cancer, this innovation makes it easier for them to find it.

A second chance for the eyes

Impaired vision is a serious global problem. According to the latest data, 253 million people are visually impaired. And the leading cause of vision loss in adulthood and old age is macular degeneration.

California-based VR startup IrisVision is focusing on this problem. The macula itself is part of the retina and is responsible for central vision. Low vision causes a deterioration in the condition of its constituent cells, resulting in the development of so-called blurry spots. It becomes difficult for a person to do ordinary things, whether it is reading books or playing chess.

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The headset, developed by IrisVision, allows a visually impaired person to expand their peripheral vision and magnify the image - thus, spots are essentially eliminated. The creators note that their method has helped improve people's vision from 20/400 to 20/30 (considered mild vision loss). Their patients were able to drive again, move around the city independently and watch their favorite TV shows.

VR against injuries

Every day, people experience injuries of varying degrees of complexity. But even after the intervention of doctors, the patient needs a long rehabilitation process to restore injured muscles.

Doctors usually recommend massages, exercises, exercises with an expander. But we have created an innovative VR simulator that turns a long and tedious rehabilitation into an exciting entertainment.

Virtual reality is a powerful tool for increasing the patient's motivation, both as an independent technique and being integrated into modern rehabilitation technologies.

The design of the so-called "health machine" allows you to effectively load the necessary muscle groups, which contributes to recovery. The VR simulator is being tested at the Symmetry rehabilitation center (Minsk, Belarus). Traumatologists-orthopedists use the device for patients with damage to the muscles of the upper shoulder girdle, as well as for the treatment of childhood scoliosis - they have developed a unique set of physical exercises based on virtual reality.

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It is too early to talk about the results (the simulator was given to the rehabilitation center earlier this year), but the first experience is positive. The platform provides constant feedback with the patient, reacts to his every action. And, thanks to the reaction to changes in activity in real time, it gives true feedback on the quality of human movements and success in solving the tasks prescribed in the scenario.

VR therapy in a playful way is also offered by the French startup KineQuantum. Its founders have developed several video games that follow traditional rehabilitation exercises. For example, to restore the shoulder joint, patients are offered to shoot from a bow.

Research has shown that in conventional physical therapy, when asked to bend the arm to 90 degrees, the person tends to stop at 60. Because they are in pain and fear more suffering. Thanks to virtual reality, this psychological barrier can be bypassed.

An experiment by scientists from the University of Bergen (Norway) showed that virtual reality is effective even for restoring the motor functions of paralyzed limbs. They tested the effect of the technique on 60 patients undergoing rehabilitation after a stroke.

As a result, the functionality of the limbs of people who took part in the study improved by 21%, and three months after the end of the study - by 30%. At the same time, the gameplay in VR distracts the patient from obsessive thoughts that impede effective rehabilitation.

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In fact, there are many more projects offering solutions for practitioners, hospitals and patients - technology such as virtual reality is finding more and more applications in medicine.

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