what does bungee-jumping have to do with
mental healthcare you’re probably
thinking not much and you’re probably
right yet in these minutes I want to
share with you how the two became
connected for me as a researcher I
normally study risky and delinquent
behavior and a couple of years ago my
research team and I wanted to understand
how feelings like fear and excitement
influence the way people perceive risk
and we figured that virtual reality or
VR would be a great tool to make people
feel excited or fearful and in
particular we were thinking about bungee
jumping so this is me standing on one of
the highest dams in Europe ready to make
my first bungee jump the thing that you
see sticking out of the helmet I’m
wearing is a rig with a 360 degrees
camera ready to record to jump and the
idea is of course that you as a
participant in a research will
experience that jump yourself in VR and
all the excitement and fear that comes
with it
here’s a here’s a taste of what that
more or less looks like so for someone
with with math fear of heights myself
this was not exactly easy but it was
very rewarding because it taught me
firsthand that facing my fear is
probably the best way to overcome it now
while I was doing the fun stuff My
partner was thinking about how to make
mental health care more accessible to
people and she’s also a psychology
professor and she’s also a licensed
therapist so it probably gives you a
rough idea of what we tend to talk about
over dinner at night and it was it was
during one of these talks that we had
that we realized that my VR projects
could actually contribute to her mission
of making healthcare more accessible
here’s how many people suffer from fears
that are so intense that they become
debilitating fears like fear of heights
for example for these people just
thinking about bungee jumping even in VR
is probably already too much maybe
standing on a balcony or
going up an escalator is already too
challenging for them such fears are
called specific phobia and besides fear
of heights you can think of fear flying
fear of mice fear of spiders fear of
small spaces people who suffer from a
specific phobia they realized that their
fear is excessive and unreasonable but
they’re just unable to overcome it these
phobias are very common you probably
know someone yourself was experienced
one or more during his or her life in
fact about 10 percent of all people
suffer from one or more of these phobias
in their lifetime that makes them one of
the most common mental disorders
worldwide now what’s worse is that if
you don’t treat them they may become
chronic or they may result in other
disorders may be even more serious
disorders like depression now the good
news is that there is actually good
treatment for this we know a lot about
it and the way we treat it normally is
by gradually exposing people with the
object or the situation that they fear
we call that gradua exposure and it’s
very effective already in the 1990s
pioneering researchers started
experimenting with VR to expose people
to the object of their fear and to
replace basically these real-life
exposure situations and their idea was
that instead of having to for instance
physically go up a building to practice
you could also put people on a building
in VR and the brain they thought would
trick these people into perceiving the
situation as real and guess what it
turns out these pioneers were right VR
exposure therapy is as effective as
exposure in the real world now the
problem still is that it’s still very
costly to treat people this way because
it’s time intensive and you need a
therapist to do it now of course many
people are also ashamed embarrassed or
afraid to seek treatment so many phobics
do not get the treatment they actually
need but what if we can develop a
treatment that people can do themselves
from the comfort of their own homes and
in their own time during one of these
dinner talks we had we realized that
this should be possible if we make
clever use of existing technology
technology that every
one here Garry’s around with them in
their pockets what I’m referring to of
course is your smartphone together with
a cardboard box that costs 10 euros that
contains two lenses you can convert your
phone you’re probably familiar with it
into a very basic yet effective VR
cardboard goggles now with these two
tools and my recent bungee jumping
experiences in mind we set out
developing a therapy for fear of heights
and we call it a gel of phobia for zero
phobia you don’t need a therapist you
don’t even need a computer what you need
your smartphone one of these cardboard
boxes some time and a little dedication
a virtual therapist comes with the app
and she’ll guide you through the entire
process here she is this is the exposure
part now exposure is not exactly the
most fun thing you can think of if you
fear the situation so we’ve developed a
game around it and in the game you don’t
only get to conquer your fear but you
also get to fix things and save kittens
and find lost bikes so it’s engaging its
engaging but does it work well as
scientist we felt it was necessary to
come up with the proof the empirical
evidence that its effect effective so
together with view University in
Amsterdam over the past year and a half
about 200 people participated in zero
phobia and we just got the results back
and they’re very encouraging people who
participated who followed the program
reported a significant drop in their
fear levels that means basically that
you can get rid of your fear without
having to get up from your couch now
we’re dedicated to to continue with this
project the mission is to help people
worldwide get rid of their fears and now
that we have an effective therapy for
fear of heights we basically have the
blueprint for treating other types of
phobia as well but that may only be the
beginning
what about depression or burnout which
are very prevalent mental disorders in
our society today I think with the
clever use the clever and creative use
of modern technology we should be able
to come up with treatment for these
problems as well
of the current cost of treatment so
evidence-based an affordable treatment
that’s accessible for everyone that’s
the goal
thank you [Applause]
mental healthcare you’re probably
thinking not much and you’re probably
right yet in these minutes I want to
share with you how the two became
connected for me as a researcher I
normally study risky and delinquent
behavior and a couple of years ago my
research team and I wanted to understand
how feelings like fear and excitement
influence the way people perceive risk
and we figured that virtual reality or
VR would be a great tool to make people
feel excited or fearful and in
particular we were thinking about bungee
jumping so this is me standing on one of
the highest dams in Europe ready to make
my first bungee jump the thing that you
see sticking out of the helmet I’m
wearing is a rig with a 360 degrees
camera ready to record to jump and the
idea is of course that you as a
participant in a research will
experience that jump yourself in VR and
all the excitement and fear that comes
with it
here’s a here’s a taste of what that
more or less looks like so for someone
with with math fear of heights myself
this was not exactly easy but it was
very rewarding because it taught me
firsthand that facing my fear is
probably the best way to overcome it now
while I was doing the fun stuff My
partner was thinking about how to make
mental health care more accessible to
people and she’s also a psychology
professor and she’s also a licensed
therapist so it probably gives you a
rough idea of what we tend to talk about
over dinner at night and it was it was
during one of these talks that we had
that we realized that my VR projects
could actually contribute to her mission
of making healthcare more accessible
here’s how many people suffer from fears
that are so intense that they become
debilitating fears like fear of heights
for example for these people just
thinking about bungee jumping even in VR
is probably already too much maybe
standing on a balcony or
going up an escalator is already too
challenging for them such fears are
called specific phobia and besides fear
of heights you can think of fear flying
fear of mice fear of spiders fear of
small spaces people who suffer from a
specific phobia they realized that their
fear is excessive and unreasonable but
they’re just unable to overcome it these
phobias are very common you probably
know someone yourself was experienced
one or more during his or her life in
fact about 10 percent of all people
suffer from one or more of these phobias
in their lifetime that makes them one of
the most common mental disorders
worldwide now what’s worse is that if
you don’t treat them they may become
chronic or they may result in other
disorders may be even more serious
disorders like depression now the good
news is that there is actually good
treatment for this we know a lot about
it and the way we treat it normally is
by gradually exposing people with the
object or the situation that they fear
we call that gradua exposure and it’s
very effective already in the 1990s
pioneering researchers started
experimenting with VR to expose people
to the object of their fear and to
replace basically these real-life
exposure situations and their idea was
that instead of having to for instance
physically go up a building to practice
you could also put people on a building
in VR and the brain they thought would
trick these people into perceiving the
situation as real and guess what it
turns out these pioneers were right VR
exposure therapy is as effective as
exposure in the real world now the
problem still is that it’s still very
costly to treat people this way because
it’s time intensive and you need a
therapist to do it now of course many
people are also ashamed embarrassed or
afraid to seek treatment so many phobics
do not get the treatment they actually
need but what if we can develop a
treatment that people can do themselves
from the comfort of their own homes and
in their own time during one of these
dinner talks we had we realized that
this should be possible if we make
clever use of existing technology
technology that every
one here Garry’s around with them in
their pockets what I’m referring to of
course is your smartphone together with
a cardboard box that costs 10 euros that
contains two lenses you can convert your
phone you’re probably familiar with it
into a very basic yet effective VR
cardboard goggles now with these two
tools and my recent bungee jumping
experiences in mind we set out
developing a therapy for fear of heights
and we call it a gel of phobia for zero
phobia you don’t need a therapist you
don’t even need a computer what you need
your smartphone one of these cardboard
boxes some time and a little dedication
a virtual therapist comes with the app
and she’ll guide you through the entire
process here she is this is the exposure
part now exposure is not exactly the
most fun thing you can think of if you
fear the situation so we’ve developed a
game around it and in the game you don’t
only get to conquer your fear but you
also get to fix things and save kittens
and find lost bikes so it’s engaging its
engaging but does it work well as
scientist we felt it was necessary to
come up with the proof the empirical
evidence that its effect effective so
together with view University in
Amsterdam over the past year and a half
about 200 people participated in zero
phobia and we just got the results back
and they’re very encouraging people who
participated who followed the program
reported a significant drop in their
fear levels that means basically that
you can get rid of your fear without
having to get up from your couch now
we’re dedicated to to continue with this
project the mission is to help people
worldwide get rid of their fears and now
that we have an effective therapy for
fear of heights we basically have the
blueprint for treating other types of
phobia as well but that may only be the
beginning
what about depression or burnout which
are very prevalent mental disorders in
our society today I think with the
clever use the clever and creative use
of modern technology we should be able
to come up with treatment for these
problems as well
of the current cost of treatment so
evidence-based an affordable treatment
that’s accessible for everyone that’s
the goal
thank you [Applause]
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