# Personalizing Exposure Therapy via Reinforcement Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14095 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14095/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 1 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [PCGRL: Procedural Content Generation via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.09212/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Personalized therapy, in which a therapeutic practice is adapted to an individual patient, can lead to improved health outcomes. Typically, this is accomplished by relying on a therapist's training and intuition along with feedback from a patient. However, this requires the therapist to become an expert on any technological components, such as in the case of Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET). While there exist approaches to automatically adapt therapeutic content to a patient, they generally rely on hand-authored, pre-defined rules, which may not generalize to all individuals. In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically adapt therapeutic content to patients based on physiological measures. We implement our approach in the context of virtual reality arachnophobia exposure therapy, and rely on experience-driven procedural content generation via reinforcement learning (EDPCGRL) to generate virtual spiders to match an individual patient. Through a human subject study, we demonstrate that our system significantly outperforms a more common rules-based method, highlighting its potential for enhancing personalized therapeutic interventions.