The Use of Virtual Reality in Patients with Eating Disorders: Systematic Review
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Patients with eating disorders are characterized by pathological eating habits and a tendency to overestimate their weight and body shape. Virtual reality shows promise for the evaluation and management of patients with eating disorders. This technology, when accepted by this population, allows immersion in virtual environments, assessment, and therapeutic approaches, by exposing users to high-calorie foods or changes in body shape. OBJECTIVE: To better understand the value of virtual reality, we conducted a review of the literature, including clinical studies proposing the use of virtual reality for the evaluation and management of patients with eating disorders. METHODS: We searched PubMed, PsycINFO, ScienceDirect, the Cochrane Library, Scopus, and Web of Science up to April 2017. We created the list of keywords based on two domains: virtual reality and eating disorders. We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses to identify, select, and critically appraise relevant research while minimizing bias. RESULTS: The initial database searches identified 311 articles, 149 of which we removed as duplicates. We analyzed the resulting set of 26 unique studies that met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 8 studies were randomized controlled trials, 13 were nonrandomized studies, and 5 were clinical trials with only 1 participant. Most articles focused on clinical populations (19/26, 73%), with the remainder reporting case-control studies (7/26, 27%). Most of the studies used visual immersive equipment (16/26, 62%) with a head-mounted display (15/16, 94%). Two main areas of interest emerged from these studies: virtual work on patients’ body image (7/26, 27%) and exposure to virtual food stimuli (10/26, 38%). CONCLUSIONS: We conducted a broad analysis of studies on the use of virtual reality in patients with eating disorders. This review of the literature showed that virtual reality is an acceptable and promising therapeutic tool for patients with eating disorders.
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VR-assisted therapies offer numerous benefits for the clinician and the patient, including availability, potential for being used in a more ecological way, and possibility of molding the virtual environment according to the specific pathology and needs of the patient.
“VR-assisted therapies offer numerous benefits, both for the clinician and the patient, highlighted by most authors cited in this paper, such as: availability, the potential of being used in a more ecological way, and the possibility of molding the virtual environment according to the specific pathology and needs of the patient (Aminov et al., 2018; Botella et al., 2015; Clu”
From Virtual reality and psychedelics for the treatment of psychiatric disease: A systematic literature review (2020) · cites this paper as Clus et al., 2018
The Introduction (page unavailable) describes controllable virtual settings that can reproduce situations difficult to arrange in real life, and the Discussion’s conclusion says environments can be adapted to patients’ psychological states. The Discussion section on virtual environments also reports reactions similar to those elicited by real food. These passages support tailoring and a potential for realistic exposure, but our copy does not identify availability as a benefit; its Introduction instead notes limited therapist training and high equipment costs. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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- Authors
- Clus, D., Larsen, M. E., Lemey, C., & Berrouiguet, S.
- Affiliations
- Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire de Brest (FR)
- Black Dog Institute (AU)
- Université de Bretagne Occidentale (FR)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Berrouiguet, Sofian
- Venue
- Journal of Medical Internet Research
- Publisher
- JMIR Publications Inc.
- Published
- 2018-04-27
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- e157
- ISSN
- 1438-8871 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5948410
- OpenAlex
- W2802632382
- Cited by
- 164
- References
- 61
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 2.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Journal of Medical Internet Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- UNSWorks (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Fondation de l'Avenir pour la Recherche Médicale Appliquée
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies
- Keywords
- virtual reality, eating disorders, body image, exposure therapy, immersive virtual environments, head-mounted displays, treatment acceptability
- MeSH terms
- Virtual Reality, Feeding and Eating Disorders, Body Image, Body Weight, Humans
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