Development and validation of a virtual reality program for the treatment of aerophobia

Background: Virtual reality (VR) has found a special place as an innovative tool in the field of therapy, especially for the treatment of specific phobias, including the fear of flying (aviophobia), and allows people to gradually and safely face the fear factor.Traditional treatments for fear of flying, despite their effectiveness, often have implementation challenges and can cause a lot of anxiety for people.Although the potential of VR in the treatment of specific phobias and aviophobia is promising, there are significant research gaps in the design, validation, and long-term effectiveness of VR programs.Most of the previous researches have focused on investigating the feasibility of using VR, and questions about the optimal configuration of the program and the individual characteristics of the user that can influence the effectiveness and sustainability of the results remain unanswered.Aims: The present study aimed to validate a virtual reality (VR) program to reduce the fear of flying.Methods: In the initial phase, this research was of an exploratory-descriptive type, and in the preliminary implementation phase, it was a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test design with a control group.The study sample consisted of 26 individuals in 2023-2024 who were selected through convenience sampling and randomly assigned to two experimental (13 people) and control (13 people) groups.The research instruments included the Fear of Flying Questionnaire (FFQ-II) and a virtual reality (VR) program.Analysis of variance (mixed or mixed) was used to analyze the data.Results: The results showed that there was a significant difference between the control and experimental groups regarding fear of flying at the level of P < 0.001.Conclusion: Overall, the results of the present study showed that the virtual reality (VR) program was effective in reducing the fear of flying.