Pegasys VR: Integrating Virtual Humans in the Treatment of Child Social Anxiety

Among children, social anxiety is a common, severe and chronic disorder. Social Effectiveness Therapy for Children (SET-C) is an empirically supported treatment with significant potential to impact the lives of children with this severe and chronic disorder. The proposed Pegasys-VR™ system will distinctly enhance its utility, as it will allow dissemination to a broad variety of clinical settings including schools as well as traditional outpatient clinics. Its use for the treatment of social skills deficits will offer a superior solution for mental health personnel, solving many of the resource and logistic barriers that they currently face. The final product will address cost and practical issues by disseminating an empirically-supported treatment that was rigorously built and tested. Using VE will make the traditional social skills therapy programs program cost-effective and patient-centric, allowing even clinicians with little background/training in behavior therapy to have tools not typically available to them.