I believe that many of us suffer from phobias. Some of mine are dancing with someone with the fear that I may not be able to follow him (or her) women have asked me to dance too.

Another is fear of bugs which is probably very common...and I've always had a fear of roller coasters...and, of course, a fear of the hereafter, which none of us know about so we try to live a good life here.

Anyway I came across this article and I thought it very worthy so I included it my blog. How far we've come with technology.

Unbelievable....yet here's another area!

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How Virtual Medicine Works
Millions of people suffer from phobias that limit their activities and negatively impacting their lives. Many seek psychological treatment in order to manage or conquer their fears. For years, a popular form of treatment was exposure therapy, in which a therapist would expose a patient to stimuli related to his fear in a controlled environment. In many cases, patients would learn to manage their anxiety through repeated exposure coupled with encouragement from a therapist.
Exposure therapy is time consuming. Often it's also expensive and inconvenient, and it can compromise patient confidentiality. For example, treating a patient with aerophobia, or the fear of flying, usually involves a trip to the airport. It might take several visits for a therapist and patient to make their way through security to a gate. Eventually both have to get on a plane and fly to a destination. Now that you have to be a ticketed passenger to pass through security at airports, it can be prohibitively expensive to treat a patient with exposure therapy. Because patients and therapists travel together, the patient's confidentiality is compromised because the public has the opportunity to see the therapy in action.
Virtual Reality Image Gallery
Photo courtesy of Virtually Better, Inc.Virtually Better, Inc. uses virtual therapy to treat a patient's fear of flying.One alternative to traditional exposure therapy is virtual reality exposure therapy. This kind of therapy uses a virtual reality unit to simulate situations that cause anxiety in phobia patients. It has several advantages over traditional therapy. Doctors don't have to leave their offices. Scheduling treatment is easier. It's less expensive in the long run. And patients are often more willing to participate in a program they know will allow them to deal with their fears in a nonphysical setting. Since patients can undergo therapy inside the doctor's office, confidentiality isn't an issue.
Dr. Larry Hodges, a virtual reality computer scientist at the University of North Carolina -- Chapel Hill, became interested in a possible therapeutic application of VR technology in the early 1990s. He approached Dr. Barbara Rothbaum, a professor of Psychiatry at Emory University, and together they collaborated on a project that would test VR technology's efficacy in recreating patients' fears. They decided to design a simulation for patients suffering from acrophobia, or a fear of heights. Dr. Hodges felt that it would be relatively easy to create a program giving the illusion of height compared to other, more complex fears.
Thank YouThanks to Dr. Larry Hodges of the University of North Carolina -- Chapel Hill for his help with this article.
Dr. Hodges and his team worked with Dr. Rothbaum and volunteer patients to determine what stimuli were particularly powerful. Volunteers would wear a head-mounted display (HMD) that would create the illusion that they were on a tall ledge. Going into the project, Hodges and Rothbaum weren't certain that they would get the same reactions from volunteers in a virtual environment as they would a real one, nor were they sure that by treating someone using virtual environments that progress would translate into the real world.
Video Gallery: Using Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality is not only used to help people get over their phobias or play games in a more realistic setting. Check out these videos on HowStuffWorks to see some other uses of virtual reality.
UC Davis has built a virtual reality cave; researchers don't have to look at flat, 2-D maps anymore. Using a radar scanning technique called Lidar, geologists can better measure earthquakes at a distance. See how virtual reality and earthquakes work in this video from UC Davis' NewsWatch.
The Chaim Sheba Rehabilitation Hospital, near Tel Aviv, Israel, has developed a virtual reality system to aid in the physical rehabilitation of its patients. Using a life-sized video game, patients are forced to use atrophied muscles to heal injuries or disorders. See how virtual reality reahbilitation works in this video from Reuters.