Technology-Assisted Psychotherapy

Project team and vision

How can psychotherapy be designed in the future to be effective, accessible, and adapted to people’s real lives? Our team is committed to exploring how new technological possibilities can help rethink psychotherapeutic care across spatial, structural, and methodological boundaries. In particular, digital and immersive formats such as virtual reality (VR) open up new ways to make therapeutic processes more flexible, individualized, and effective.

We are especially interested in how VR and other digital formats can be used to enhance and further develop traditional psychotherapeutic methods. A key concern is improving the feasibility of interventions such as exposure and response prevention (ERP). In practice, ERP is not often implemented, often because therapists are unable or unwilling to leave their office or because patients are not yet able to face feared stimuli in real-life settings. Practical barriers, such as the absence of a real audience in the treatment of public speaking anxiety, can also complicate the application of ERP.

Technology-assisted approaches like VR offer new therapeutic opportunities by allowing for safe, realistic, and reproducible ERP settings. Such immersive formats can enhance motivation, boost therapeutic effectiveness, and offer innovative, experience-based access to mindfulness. In addition, immersive technologies like VR avatars can be used to structure the therapeutic relationship to the patient’s inner parts without relying solely on the imagination. Artificial intelligence (AI) also opens up a wide range of possibilities to support psychotherapeutic processes and expand access to care.

We also see great potential in digital, location-independent therapy formats to help overcome structural barriers such as long waiting times, limited access in rural areas, or reduced flexibility due to caregiving responsibilities, which often affects women. Our goal is to advance psychotherapeutic care through technology-assisted solutions and make it accessible to more people.