Exposure Therapy for Agoraphobia Using Standalone Digital Therapeutics : Perceived Usability of a Smartphone Application in Self Directed Exposure Therapy for Agoraphobia

Sammanfattning: Agoraphobia is the fear of situations where a person perceives the environment as unsafe with no easy way to escape. A common way to treat agoraphobia is to use exposure therapy. An important part of exposure therapy is the homework practice of self-directed exposure sessions a patient does without the therapist, in between therapy sessions. These self-directed sessions come with many challenges, such as making sure the patient feels supported, motivated and that they do the session in the ’right’ way. Solutions to these challenges have been researched and developed in previous studies. However, these studies do not fully make use of all the possibilities that come with today’s mobile technology. This study aims to fill this gap by designing and evaluating a smartphone application called Exphobia. The overall methodological approach was based on the iterative research approach of Design Science Research. The development of Exphobia shows that it is technically possible to build a smartphone app that fulfills the different requirements. The evaluation of Exphobia shows that a smartphone application could potentially be an effective form of support in such a setting. However, further testing needs to be performed with patients diagnosed with agoraphobia to make any conclusions about the clinical effectiveness