VR-Counseling to Reduce Public Speaking Anxiety

Summary

Public Speaking Anxiety (PSA) is a common manifestation of social anxiety among university students that can negatively impact academic performance and psychological well-being. Virtual Reality (VR) based interventions combined with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) represent a promising approach to address PSA by enabling controlled, gradual exposure to feared social situations through realistic simulations of audiences and settings. This randomized controlled trial will evaluate whether integrating VR sessions into standard psychological counseling provided by the University Psychological Counseling Service (UPCS) improves anxiety and PSA outcomes in university students compared with counseling alone.

Participants will be randomized to one of two groups: (1) a control group receiving standard psychological counseling intervention, or (2) an experimental group receiving psychological counseling supplemented with VR interventions delivered via immersive 360° video scenarios. The VR-based intervention includes a VR-Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) module offering graded exposure to anxiety-provoking public speaking contexts, and a VR-Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) module aimed at enhancing mindfulness and psychological flexibility through guided experiential exercises. Psychological outcomes and physiological responses recorded during sessions will be analyzed to compare the effectiveness of VR-integrated counseling versus standard counseling alone. This study addresses the limited evidence on CBT combined with 360° video-based VR exposure for PSA in university students and introduces a novel VR-based ERP and ACT protocol tailored to a university counseling setting.

Conditions

• Anxiety and Distress
• Anxiety
• Anxiety Disease
• Public Speaking Anxiety

Interventions

DEVICE

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

to simulate feared-anxiety-evoking scenarios, allowing both assessment and training for situationally induced anxiety to progressively promote desensitization to the anxiety-provoking stimuli

DEVICE

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) training

to provide an ACT-consistent mindfulness training targeting psychological flexibility processes, such as contact with the present moment, cognitive defusion, and acceptance, aimed at eliciting a grounding response within a digitally generated, safe environment.

BEHAVIORAL

Counseling program

Standard counseling sessions will be conducted by one psychotherapist for 6 consecutive weeks in 60-minute sessions.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Calabria

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

40 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-03-01

Primary Completion

2026-10-12

Completion

2026-12-31

Countries

• Italy

Study Locations