“Drop the beat”: Virtual reality based mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy for panic disorder — A pilot study

Abstract

In this paper, we present a virtual reality based content/system called the “Drop the beat” designed to help the mindfulness and train one to overcome panic disorder. The two main elements of the proposed system are the (1) use of 360-degree video for presenting the panic inducing situation and, (2) facilitation of the mindfulness through a compelling scenario and immersive experience with multimodal feedback. In particular, we hypothesized that the direct observance and tangibly feeling for the beating heart in one's hand would help the user train to rationalize and overcome the situation (and e.g. effectively bring down one's heart rate back to a normal level). We conducted a small pilot study, administering the proposed VR content to five panic disorder patients and report the interim results. © 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).