Design and validation of virtual environments for the treatment of cleaning obsessive-compulsive disorder

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During the coronavirus outbreak, it was noted that pre-existing psychological illnesses worsened, and numerous research indicate that those with contamination-related obsessions and cleaning compulsions (C-OCD) may be more affected. Virtual Reality (VR) and other immersive technologies have shown to be effective for the treatment of disorders related to anxiety, thus showing their potential to transform OCD treatment by means of integrating virtual elements. VR exposure has shown benefits compared to live or imagined exposure, however, to be effective it must be able to elicit high emotional arousal in users. Based on this, the present work aimed to develop different virtual environments scenarios and evaluate their efficacy in generating an emotional response in people with C-OCD symptoms. Based on the literature review, two virtual scenarios were created (dirty public bathroom and unhygienic kitchen). Subsequently, two groups were then constituted: C-OCD group (n = 20, aged between 18 and 48 years) characterized by an obtained score of more than 13 points (cut-point) in the Yale-Brown Scale for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (Y-BOCS) and by showing C-OCD symptoms when doing the structured interview (SCID-I), and a control group (n = 20, aged between 18 and 56 years), all participants were residents of the Dominican Republic. Exposure to the virtual environments generated high levels of state and subjective anxiety in both groups, although significantly higher in the C-OCD group. The results obtained indicate that the VR scenarios developed are suitable for eliciting emotional responses and, consequently, that they can be used to complement the treatment of C-OCD.