Cybertherapy in practice: the VEPSY updated project.
Rapid and far-reaching technological advances are changing the ways in which people relate, communicate, and live. Technologies that were hardly used ten years ago, such as the Internet, e-mail, and video teleconferencing are becoming familiar methods for diagnosis, therapy, education and training. This is producing an emerging field (cybertherapy) whose focus is the use of communication and information technologies to improve the health care processes. To exploit and understand this potential was the aim of the Telemedicine and Portable Virtual Environment in Clinical Psychology, VEPSY UPDATED, an European Community funded research project (IST-2000-25323, http://www.cybertherapy.info). The chapter describes the clinical and technical rationale behind the cybertherapy applications developed by the project. Further, the actual role of virtual reality in the cybertherapy field is discussed, focusing on the advantages provided by its three different faces: technological, experiential and communicative.
Riva
Giuseppe
G
Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab., Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy.
Botella
Cristina
C
Castelnuovo
Gianluca
G
Gaggioli
Andrea
A
Mantovani
Fabrizia
F
Molinari
Enrico
E
D007558:Italy; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000458:organization & administration*