Fear of weather a widely-untreated phobia, VR may be answer
Reporter
Sunday, October 21, 2018, 12:37 PM - With an endless stream of images of devastating weather events from around the globe and solutions to climate change looking bleak, it may seem difficult not to worry.
Dr. Margo Watt is a psychology professor at St. Francis Xavier University whose research focuses on anxiety. With the increasing frequency of intense of severe weather, she wondered if the numbers of people with natural environment phobias was going up as well. Watt began looking into the subject back in 2008 and found that, apart from two studies done by John Westefeld who coined the term severe weather phobia in 1996, there was very little research done on the subject.
(Related: Top 10 weather phobias)
"We don't know a whole lot," Watt says. "We sort of know that it fits the specific phobia. Some people are so acutely afraid of severe weather and are so negatively impacted by it; that's about two to three per cent. Then there's another ten per cent that report moderate to high fears, so that's a good chunk of people."
Her study in 2012 zeroed in on people who've experienced severe weather first-hand.
"Almost half -- 42 to 43 per cent -- of those who had experienced a severe weather event had a lot of fear about severe weather," Watt says. "And, of that group, a much smaller group we would say were phobic," meaning they "had great distress if they heard severe weather was approaching, and would engage in behaviours to avoid severe weather."
From that high fear group, the top three direct experiences that sparked fear were hurricanes, blizzards, and thunderstorms. The most feared severe weather event - tornadoes. Watt has found media images also play a role, along with modeled behaviours, such as a parent expressing fear about a storm to their child.
Watt says most people with a specific phobia of any sort don't seek treatment, even though exposure through cognitive behavioural therapy is very effective.
"Somebody who's afraid of tornadoes, you might get them to look at pictures and talk about tornadoes. You might get them to look at pictures of tornadoes, then moving images of them." Working step-by-step through increasing stimuli can help people learn to deal with their fears. "You work them through the hierarchy and, at each step, you get them to stay there until they learn to practice ways of relaxing their distress."
The highest step: virtual reality, which puts people in the heart of a virtual storm.
Dr. Watt is currently looking for participants for a survey exploring the relationship between personality and fear of weather.
