A Fear of Heights

Client
Private patient

This patient was an adult female with a fear of heights which had been ongoing for many years. This was restricting many of the activities she wanted to take part in. It was also impacting family life and preventing the family taking part in many activities together. The fear had led to her being extremely cautious in everyday life, with her family also becoming restricted in many of their everyday activities.  

In the VR studio, over four sessions of 20 minutes, the patient experienced graded exposure to a number of scenarios to work with the therapist on her fear of heights, including gradually increasing in height in a building with a glass balcony. She also worked in a virtual scene of going up a mountain in a chair ski lift to challenge the fear of heights. The patient was able to work through the graded scenes and learn techniques to manage her anxiety in these situations. Her family were able to observe the sessions and see the techniques the therapist taught the patient to help her manage her anxiety.  

At the end of the last VR session, the patient is given some small next steps to try in the ‘real world’. Two months after treatment the patient completed the post-treatment assessment form which looks at the outcomes of the VR treatment. The patient described her outcomes as a definite improvement. She described herself as less fearful of heights and with a great deal less anxiety and stress in the height situations she would previously have feared. The result is that she and her family can do things differently now and are able to visit situations she previously would have found too difficult resulting in the family being able to do many more activities. Whilst there is still some anxiety there, she now has confidence that she can manage this and has gone on to work through increasingly challenging real-life situations with success.