A Cross - Cultural Validation of VR Treatment System for Flying Phobia in the Mexican Population

Abstract

Anxiety as a symptom or disorder is affected by multiple variables such as antecedent events, interpretation of the events, psychological vulnerability, and individual differences in the reaction towards an event. Nowadays, virtual-reality therapy is used as therapeutic tool for patients suffering from some kind of anxiety disorder. In Mexico, the National Survey on Psychiatric Epidemiology [1] informed that anxiety disorders are the most common disorders followed by affective disorders, which are more prevalent in women than in men. Among the different anxiety disorders, the category of specific phobias (7.1%) was the most common. Based on this demand, a collaborative effort between research groups from the University Jaume I in Spain and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), initiated a project which purpose was the technological transfer of systems based on virtual reality for the treatment of Fear of Flying to be implemented and evaluated in the Mexican population. The treatment protocol developed by Botella et al., [2] has been applied to five volunteer participants. In this paper we present data of adapted treatment protocols in Mexican population that support the efficacy of VR of treatment of fear of flying, achieved by the Spanish research group.