What do I do if my patient feels dizzy?

In a small percentage of the population, the use of virtual reality can cause “Cybersickness” (dizziness, nausea, disorientation, visual fatigue, and vertigo).

This is due to sensory signal incongruence. This means that there is a discrepancy between what they are perceiving visually in virtual reality, and what their body senses.

It is important to know that this situation is improving, as technology is advancing, and Amelia has made improvements to the tool to help with this. 

- If you find that a patient is experiencing problems with motion sickness when using VR, you can do a first session to help them get used to it. Within the session:

• Start with a shorter exposure.
• Make sure to always stop the session whenever the patient indicates that they start to feel dizzy.
• Always warn them before starting the session: "If you get dizzy, let me know and we'll stop the session for a while, and then we'll try again".

- Once the patient has recovered, they should put the headset back on, and start the
exposure again:

• Gradually extending the time of exposure to virtual reality until they become accustomed to it.
• Increase the exposure times in intervals of 2 to 3 minutes, i.e. first a 5-minute exposure, then 7 minutes and so on gradually.

- To avoid anxiety problems, in this session you should select an environment that is not part of the therapy hierarchy but where the avatar changes location (e.g. the Subway or the Island environments).

- If you need to work on the hierarchy during this first session, then we recommend that you lower the exposure gradient. For example, instead of using both the take-off and turbulence events in the Plane scene in Fear of Flying, use only the take-off event.

 

In summary, the idea is to form a repeated exposure, in which you increase the time
that the patient wears the headset, so that if at the beginning the patient had
symptoms of "Cybersickness", these symptoms disappear.