Virtual Reality Treatment Shows Promise for Nicotine Addiction
November 2nd, 2009
The search for effective tools to help people quit smoking has been underway for many decades, with scores of mental health professionals devoting some or all of their careers to assisting clients curb the habit. A study aiming at addressing smoking with the help of virtual reality has recently concluded, with positive findings that may make the technological technique popular for cessation programs. Participants who crushed virtual cigarettes as part of a smoking cessation program showed significantly greater rates of abstinence and lowered nicotine addiction at the end of the treatment and at a six-month follow up than participants who squeezed a virtual ball. As virtual reality technology advances, so too may addiction treatment programs.
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Comments
I’ve heard about chewing gum and squeezing the ball especially at work when you are trying to break nicotine addiction. The virtual cigarettes comes as a surprise but if its worked with the other two I am sure it should with this 1.
Virtual cigarettes? I have been in therapy for the last 2 months to break cigarette addiction. How does that work and how do I ask my doc about it?
So now it is more than just being about that hand to mouth fixation that so many smokers talk about. Having the chance to actually put out those virtual cigarettes can give you the job of stomping out that smoking habit. I like it. How readily available is treatment like this?
Yes, these kind of psychological techniques might help in quitting smoking, as psychological methods are more effective than anything else in these kind of issues.
A very encouraging find I’d say… a lot of people have a very tough time quitting the habit and newer methods like this one might just hold the solution.
I believe it is more helpful if the virtual real object gets as close to the real thing as possible as the perception level of it being the real thing also increases…
The plain and simple fact of the matter to me is that when people are ready to quit smoking and other addictive behaviors they will do it. It does not matter if it is through talk therapy or virtual reality simulations- if someone wants to do something bad enough they will latch on to their latest treatment and find a way to make it work. That has always been my observation of events in the past. For some if they are just not ready to quit nothing not even winning the lottery is going to make them quit. I am happy to see that there are being advances made in this field and hopefully it will help many leave their addictions behind but I am not sure that this could ever be the end all and be all.
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