User:Zeinasbai/sandbox

Article: Fear of flying

(I will be adding a sub-section in the "management" section giving more information about virtual reality exposure therapy).

Virtual reality exposure therapy
Effective treatment for phobias such as fear of flying would be one that activates and modifies the fear structure. Activation of the fear structure can be achieved by exposing the patient to the feared stimuli, flying in this case, to elicit the fearful response. Modification of the fear structure can be achieved by the processes of habituation and extinction after eliciting the fearful response several times. A new and advanced treatment for aviophobia is virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET). This type of treatment uses computer technology where the patient virtually experiences flying. This experience includes visual, auditory, and motion stimuli to imitate flying in a plane as close as possible. Thus, VRET is considered an effective treatment for aviophobia. While it can be argued that vivo exposure treatment, patients being exposed to an aircraft, is the most effective way of treatment, but VRET is more cost-effective, accessible, less time consuming, and requires less organization. Another advantage of VRET over vivo exposure treatment is that it focuses on the main reason that elicits fear of flying easily. For example, if the patient's most anxiety-inducing-component is takeoff, in VRET the patient would be exposed to a plane takeoff repeatedly while in vivo exposure the patient would have to wait for the plane to land and then take off again.