At Labpsitec, 5 scenarios specifically designed for the treatment in virtual reality (VR) of agoraphobia (i.e. room with a lift, bus, metro, department stores, tunnel) have been developed and validated in clinical population samples (Botella, García-Palacios , Villa, Baños, Quero, Alcañiz and Riva, 2007). The exposure treatment using VR has shown similar efficacy to conventional procedures of exposure and higher to the waiting list in short and long term (1 year) (Botella et al., 2007).

VR is a strategy used in cases where in vivo exposure is too aversive or where access to the scenarios object of exposure is complex.

VR scenarios are interactive, and difficulty is graduated, furthermore there is a possibility to introduce interoceptive effects like blurred vision, rapid breathing or heartbeats sound.

The exposure takes place in an office where the patient sits in front of a computer screen, he watches the screen using a VR head mounted display and moves through virtual environments with a computer mouse. The therapist sits beside the patient and the computer keyboard will graduate the difficulty of different virtual environments and the intensity of interoceptive effects. It also completes the exposure registration and introduces elements of cognitive discussion.

Nowadays a study that uses the exposure to different scenarios in VR with in vivo interoceptive exposure versus in VR is being carried out, in order to compare the efficacy of different application forms of exposure to symptoms.

A future line of research we aim to design a mobile application in order to carry out housework.