How VR could help treat depression with "radical behaviorist" Dr. Kim Bullock

Today, we're going to talk about virtual reality and how it could be used to treat depression.

We're talking with psychiatrist Kim Bullock, the founding director of Stanford's Neurobehavioral Clinic and Virtual Reality & Immersive Technologies (VRIT) program. 

Dr. Bullock — a physician certified in Neuropsychiatry, Psychiatry, and Lifestyle Medicine — calls herself a "radical behaviorist." Like other practitioners of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), she sees the troublesome thoughts and emotional states of many psychiatric disorders as just another form of behavior, which can be reshaped through self awareness and practice — much like you might work at avoiding junk food or not biting your nails.

Of course, one of the biggest challenges is the practice part. It's no easy task for patients to practice experiencing the world in a more positive, healthy way. This is why Bullock is eager for practitioners of CBT and related forms of psychotherapy to embrace virtual reality technologies — which enable psychiatrists to prescribe precisely calibrated "experiences" to treat cognitive & behavioral disorders.

We started by discussing early results from a clinical trial for a virtual reality-enhanced intervention major depressive disorder, which Dr. Bullock recently launched with support from the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Neuroscience:Translate program. 

Join us to learn more about how VR is transforming the world of psychotherapy!

Learn More

• Imagining virtual reality as a simple tool to treat depression  (Stanford Medicine, 2024)
• Extended Reality(XR) enhanced behavioral activation for treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (2022 Neuroscience:Translate grant)
• Clinical Trial: Virtual Reality Behavioral Activation: An Intervention for Major Depressive Disorder
• The Stanford Virtual Reality and Immersive Technologies (VR-IT) Program
• Recent VR-IT publications

Episode Credits
This episode was produced by Michael Osborne, with production assistance by Morgan Honaker, and hosted by Nicholas Weiler. Art by Aimee Garza.

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