Linda Geddes is a science correspondent for The Guardian. She bravely went out to test a new anxiety treatment in development by researchers at the University of Cambridge. After about five minutes of this, when I'm feeling very calm and I've got the hang of the breathing, suddenly I'm transported into a completely different environment. It's horrible. So where are you now? What’s going on? I'm underground, sat on a chair, I kind of look around me and there's like a few fluorescent light bulbs to either side. And then I look down and see that my hands are strapped to this chair and there's blood on them.I start hearing these sounds
Madeleine Finlay speaks to science correspondent Linda Geddes about trying out a virtual reality game that challenges you to keep your heart-rate down while facing a terrifying monster, why it could help with tackling anxiety, and whether the gamification of coping strategies could be the best way to integrate them into our every day lives. Help support our independent journalism at
theguardian.com/sciencepod