Virtual reality environments as auxiliaries in the treatment of obesity

The worldwide increase in overweight and obesity and the alarming statistics at national level, combined with the increasing negative effects to health and linked to chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, fat liver among others has driven to implement strategies, agreements, laws among others strategies in different disciplines to combat this epidemic, seeking treatments with long-term impact on the patients. In this paper we discuss the possible role of virtual reality (VR) in addressing this problem within an integrated cognitive behavioral approach. Virtual reality has proved to be useful for the assessment and treatment of several mental disorders, mainly anxiety disorders for its ability to produce emotional and behavioral responses similar to those that occur in the real world As a result, VR technology has been used in the treatment of almost all anxiety disorders and its application has been extended to the treatment of a wide range of psychopathologies. Specifically, as recently noticed by Ferrer-Garcia and Gutierrez-Maldonado, VR is emerging as a technology that is especially suitable for the assessment and treatment of body image disturbances. To test this approach, we conducted a controlled trial with twenty-four participants who experienced body dissatisfaction even after a >30/40% excess body weight loss, the results are presented and discussed.