virtual reality to help students overcome their phobias

To try to combat phobias, particularly during sports lessons, a method has been tested for several years with middle school students in the Alpes-Maritimes, using videos projected in virtual reality headsets.

Fear of heights, fear of drowning, fear of snakes… How can we help young people fight against these phobias? An experimental method has been used for several years with students from the Vallauris college in Alpes-Maritimes.

Here, physical education and sports teachers confront their students with their greatest fears using virtual reality. CThis is the case of Sandro, an 11-year-old 6th grader. He knows how to swim, he says, but he has trouble following his friends in the water, because his fear is putting his head underwater and drowning: “When it gets a little deep, I start to panic, I lose all my breathing”he confides. And he wants to succeed in overcoming this fear.

Each year, PE teachers identify around thirty students suffering from water phobia. They invite them to watch videos that they have designed themselves, with a virtual reality headset.

The PE teacher, Régis Fayaubost, accompanies Sandro: “You try to get to the end of the video, okay ? But at any moment, if it’s too strong emotionally, you take a step aside or you take off the mask.”explains the teacher to the little boy. The level 1 video begins, where you gradually immerse yourself under the water of a swimming pool, with a voice accompanying the child. Sandro, standing in the classroom, is completely immersed in the 360-degree video. “We are at 30 cm underwater, next to the scalesaid the voice, Everything is going well, you can look around.”.

We observe him, his body tenses, the professor notices that he is gripping the headset wire very tightly in his fingers and that he seems worried while looking from all sides. But as the video continues the exercise in a sea setting, Sandro curls up and approaches a fetal position. He panics and removes the helmet, panting but smiling. It was too much for Sandro “I saw a school of fish passing by with little light, I was scared”he says. The experience continues with a series of deep breaths to calm down, because it is not over.

The goal is to expose students to their fears, very gradually. Sandro puts the mask back on, and first victory, he finishes watching the video. “You see ? It’s great and it’s fundamental what’s happeningencourages the teacher, because you have been to the bottom of the water, you have seen fish, and your brain will register that everything is actually fine, that you are not dead! And you will see, it will allow you to unlock it and learn to swim.” Sandro is confident and thinks he can “progress, in the future”.

This idea of ​​working on students’ phobias actually comes from another establishment. For years, the Pablo-Picasso college, a seaside college classified REP, has focused on swimming every Friday afternoon. But PE teachers observed that some students still could not swim. They wanted to understand why, by discussing among themselves and in the testimonies, the fear of water always recurred in these children.

They then teamed up with researchers to create these immersive videos, in a project called Phobies 360°. For Lionel Roche, from the University of Montreal in Quebec, the goal is not to make the phobia disappear, but to ensure that it can be understood and tolerated. “Through these viewings, the brain begins to build landmarks underwater”explains the researcher, like the light which diminishes as we go deeper below the surface. These aspects allow students to “acclimatize to the aquatic environment”having “the feeling of being underwater without being there”.

When they come homestudents can even borrow a virtual reality mask from the college’s CDI, to continue sessions with teachers and practice watching videos at home. The results for overcoming this phobia are there:The goal for all students was to know how to swim. However, the Pablo-Picasso college has a success rate of 99%, one of the best in France.

And that’s not all. In this college, we also learn to master the fear of heights. Khelil is in 5th grade and suffers from vertigo. Last year he couldn’t climb the climbing wall. Itested the virtual reality headset, this time with videos of cliffs. “The helmet has helped me enormously, he testifies, because after using it I managed to climb to the top. It loosened me up and I was really, really happy.” IHe even cried, he says. Since then, he has managed to climb to the top of the climbing wall four times.

These videos were further developed: teachers filmed them for older students, future firefighters, to help them overcome their fear of snakes. Other videos immerse the viewer in the heart of large amphitheatres, to overcome the stage fright of students preparing for speech competitions.