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Treating binge eating disorders is not easy: the disordered eating is usually combined with a patient who is overweight and often obese. As underlined by the current literature, treatment outcome must focus, at a minimum, on the binge eating characterizing this disorder, on weight changes, and preferably also changes in co-morbid psychopathology. To address these issues, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is still considered the best approach. However, if we check the results of follow-up studies, different authors reported some relapse in the frequency of binge eating and small weight gains over the follow-up period. This paper describes the 6-month follow-up outcome of the Experiential Cognitive Therapy (ECT), a multi factorial treatment for binge eating disorders, including virtual reality therapy. These results are compared in a randomized controlled trial (n = 36) with the ones obtained by CBT and nutritional groups only. The results showed that 77 % of the ECT group quit binging after 6 months versus 56 % for the CBT sample and 22 % for the nutritional group sample. Moreover, the ECT sample reported better scores in most psychometric tests including EDI-2 and body image scores.

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Abstract. In assessing the usability of a virtual environment, a valuable hint may be offered by a good model of the user’s experience, which is usually described as the experience of being ‘present ’ in the environment created by the virtual technology. However, this convergence of usability and presence risks to be undermined by a rather restricted definition of the concept and the habit of evaluating only a limited portion of the environment in which the user is actually present. From this point of view, the major problems reside in the divide between the symbolic and the physical realm, on the one side, and between the simulation and the real world, on the other. In this chapter, we argue that a situated, action-based approach to virtual environments may avoid these drawbacks: users’presence is taken to emerge from the actions performed and usability is referred to the complex object created by the situated interaction with the simulation. After discussing these points, the final section will describe some aspects of an evaluation recently carried out by the authors, where this framework has been applied.

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Military personnel in a war situation appear to be especially susceptible to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), given that a high number of recently deployed service members are diagnosed with the disorder. Exposure therapy is frequently used in the treatment of this population. To our knowledge, however, there are no detailed systematic reviews of a relatively new exposure therapy, virtual reality exposure (VRE), in the treatment of combat veterans with PTSD. Therefore, the present work provides a comprehensive, 15-year overview (1999 to 2013) of research on the therapeutic effectiveness of VRE in treating PTSD in military combat veterans. A considerable body of empirical evidence suggests that VRE can decrease PTSD symptoms within the veteran population and follow-up data do show promise for maintaining positive treatment outcomes. Further research is necessary to determine the long-term effects of this treatment.