Using 360° Videos in the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

This study aims to test the feasibility and efficacy of an individualized exposure intervention using 360-degree videos for social anxiety and agoraphobia. A multiple single case design is followed with a pre-post-follow up assessment and multiple baselines. In addition, an experience sampling method is used to explore the role of dysfunctional beliefs and self-efficacy in the efficacy intervention.

There is growing evidence that supports the use of Virtual Reality (VR) to address anxiety disorders such as social anxiety and agoraphobia. The main advantage of VR is to expose participants to their fears in a controlled and safe environment. However, the access to VR remains costly for health professionals who need to pay licenses for the use of a limited number of environments. Therefore, these standardized environments only address the symptoms of standard anxious patients. As a way to provide an accessible tool that can be tailored according to patients' specific difficulties, the proposed approach builds on 360-degree videos as an alternative to VR. The aim of the present study is to test the feasibility and efficacy of an individualized expo-sure intervention using 360-degree videos. In addition, the role of cognitive processes (i.e., dysfunctional beliefs and self-efficacy) in the exposure efficacy is examined. The intervention includes eleven sessions including five sessions of exposure in 360-degree videos de-signed especially for each patient difficulties. A multiple single-case design (n=5) is adopted with three types of evaluations: (1) traditional assessment scale of primary/secondary outcomes and aspects related to the therapy, (2) daily ambulatory assessment with a multiple baseline design, (3) experience sampling of cognitive processes about feared situations. Each video will also be assessed by the participants after exposure sessions.