Development and Evaluation of an Auditory VR Generative System via Natural Language Interaction to Aid Exposure Therapy for PTSD Patients

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent disorder triggered by life-threatening trauma, and exposure therapy, which involves confronting traumatic stimuli, has been proven to be highly effective for treating PTSD. However, exposure therapy has not been widely adopted. Virtual Reality (VR) exposure therapy, which has shown comparable effectiveness to that of traditional methods, is therefore advancing. However, this therapy has not been broadly implemented, partly because of the time required to create VR experiences tailored to a patient’s specific trauma. To address this problem, this study proposes a system for exposure therapy that generates auditory VR using a Large Language Model (LLM) for natural language interaction. This system, built on LLM and an audio dataset, generates sounds matching user-provided themes and generates corresponding scenarios and coordinates. An experiment with clinicians using this system to generate auditory stimuli was conducted to assess the usability and therapeutic potential of the generated audio. The results indicated high usability and quality, requiring minimal adjustments for therapeutic applications. Notably, the clinicians generated sounds within the duration of a standard clinical session. However, challenges remain, particularly for complex themes, highlighting the need for further research to enhance usability and verify the system’s clinical feasibility and efficacy.