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Virtual Reality for Panic Disorder With Agoraphobia

NCT03101332 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 12

Last updated 2020-10-30

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Panic disorder with agoraphobia (PDA) is associated with considerable personal distress, functional disability and societal costs. A large number of studies have shown that Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is a highly effective treatment for PDA. However, the CBT-protocols proven to be most effective involves repeated exposure to the particular environments the agoraphobic patient fears such as trains, tunnels, lifts and shops. This cause great practical problems for health care services as such therapeutic efforts involves spending considerable time outside the clinic. For primary care services this is particularly challenging due to the large number of patients expected to be seen. Normally clinicians meet up to 7 patients daily which makes it almost practically impossible to offer 2-hour sessions, which is necessary to carry out the relevant exposure tasks. Hence, the treatment proven to be most effective, which primary care services are commissioned to deliver, is too comprehensive and time consuming to be applied in real practice.

The investigators believe that a possible solution to the above problem is to provide evidence-based CBT but with the exposure components carried out through Virtual Reality (VR) rather than in vivo. Some research has already been done with virtual reality and exposure therapy for anxiety disorders with promising results. The aim of this pilot study is to treat patients with agoraphobia with or with a history of panic disorder with a standardized exposure-based CBT-protocol through VR. The virtual environments that are used for the study are live sequences filmed in 360°. The investigators hypothesize that CBT with VR will be effective and lead to improvements on measures of panic disorder and agoraphobia.

Conditions

  • Panic; Agoraphobia

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Virtual Reality cognitive behavior therapy

Cognitive interventions targeted to change catastrophic misinterpretations of the physiological symptoms that occur during a panic attack. Exposure via Virtual Reality to filmed sequences of environments typically feared by agoraphobic patients such as underground station/train, a tunnel, a lift and a public square, as well as exposure to the feared symptoms that occur in a typical panic attack. Interventions are delivered by a psychologist in face-to-face sessions.

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Erik Hedman, PhD · Karolinska Institutet

Study Design

Allocation
NA
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2017-05-01
Primary Completion
2019-06-18
Completion
2019-06-18

Countries

  • Sweden

Study Locations

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Entities

Companies

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT03101332 on ClinicalTrials.gov