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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Virtual reality exposure therapy offers a unique opportunity to treat social anxiety disorder. This meta-analysis aims to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual reality exposure therapy compared to waitlist comparators or other interventions for individuals with social anxiety disorder in alleviating anxiety symptoms. METHODS: < 0.05. Sensitivity, subgroup, and meta-regression analyses were carried out. RESULTS: A total of 17 randomized control trials were retrieved from nine electronic databases. Virtual reality exposure therapy has greater efficacy than waitlist comparators in reducing anxiety symptoms at post-intervention and follow-up assessment. Virtual reality exposure therapy demonstrates a similar effect to other interventions at post-intervention and follow-up assessment. We observed a greater effect for participants with symptomatic social anxiety when we combined the intervention with cognitive behavioral therapy compared to its counterpart. Meta-regression analyses found no significant covariate. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, virtual reality exposure therapy can provide supplementary therapy for improving anxiety symptoms. Additional high-quality and large-scale trials with long-term follow-up are needed.
Tan et al. (Tue,) studied this question.