Using 360° Videos in the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

University of Liege

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Agoraphobia; Social Anxiety Disorder

Treatments: Behavioral: Exposure intervention using 360 degree videos

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04695249

2021-360

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study aims to test the feasibility and efficacy of an individualized exposure intervention using 360-degree videos for social anxiety and agoraphobia. A multiple single case design is followed with a pre-post-follow up assessment and multiple baselines. In addition, an experience sampling method is used to explore the role of dysfunctional beliefs and self-efficacy in the efficacy intervention.

Full description

There is growing evidence that supports the use of Virtual Reality (VR) to address anxiety disorders such as social anxiety and agoraphobia. The main advantage of VR is to expose participants to their fears in a controlled and safe environment. However, the access to VR remains costly for health professionals who need to pay licenses for the use of a limited number of environments. Therefore, these standardized environments only address the symptoms of standard anxious patients. As a way to provide an accessible tool that can be tailored according to patients' specific difficulties, the proposed approach builds on 360-degree videos as an alternative to VR.

The aim of the present study is to test the feasibility and efficacy of an individualized expo-sure intervention using 360-degree videos. In addition, the role of cognitive processes (i.e., dysfunctional beliefs and self-efficacy) in the exposure efficacy is examined. The intervention includes eleven sessions including five sessions of exposure in 360-degree videos de-signed especially for each patient difficulties.

A multiple single-case design (n=5) is adopted with three types of evaluations: (1) traditional assessment scale of primary/secondary outcomes and aspects related to the therapy, (2) daily ambulatory assessment with a multiple baseline design, (3) experience sampling of cognitive processes about feared situations.

Each video will also be assessed by the participants after exposure sessions.

Enrollment: 5 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 65 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Primary diagnostic (DSM 5) of social anxiety or agoraphobia
• High level of avoidance
• French-speaking
• Having a mobile phone which met VR reading criteria

Exclusion criteria

• Having a history of psychotic or bipolar disorder
• Having a history of severe brain trauma or epilepsy
• Having a history of respiratory disturbances
• With a concurrent additional psychotherapy
• With acute suicidal ideation
• With a primary diagnosis of depression
• With a non stabilized medication
• Auto medication with alcohol or other substances
• Having migraine or motion sickness

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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5 participants in 1 patient group

Exposure intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Eleven individual sessions.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Exposure intervention using 360 degree videos