The patient wears a head-mounted display that provides visual and audio sensory cues consistent with being on a plane. With the head-mounted display, the patient can look left out the plane's window at the gate, look right and see an empty aisle, and look up and see the ceiling of the plane's cabin. The patient sits in a seat similar to an airplane seat. When the virtual plane takes off, the vibration becomes more intense. VRET is individualized, Hodges said.
All therapy is conducted by licensed clinical psychologists.
The scale ranges from 0 to 100, with 0 being no anxiety and 100 being the most anxiety they have ever felt. During the VRET, a computer monitor shows the therapist what the patient sees in the head-mounted display. The therapist seeks to make the experience comparable to flying on a real airplane, Hodges said. So if we do a takeoff, we would do flying and a landing. We would not just have the plane take off and magically be back at the runway.