Rephobia: Where technology meets therapy to overcome fear

Liam Harte is a Computer Science student at Queen’s University Belfast and the founder of Rephobia, a therapist-led virtual reality platform that helps people confront and overcome their phobias. Rephobia was named one of the winners of the 2025 Unity for Humanity program, recognizing its potential to make mental health treatment more accessible. Liam has also been supported through Catalyst’s Co-Founders Programme and QUBIS, and was named by Belfast City Council as one of the region’s top young entrepreneurs in the “21 Under 21” awards.

Facing fear in a new way

Around the world, millions suffer quietly with phobias: intense, irrational fears that limit everyday life. Traditional exposure therapy is effective but often requires access, resources, and time that many can’t afford.

Rephobia was founded in 2024 with a clear mission: to make treatment for phobias more accessible, safe, and affordable. The idea was sparked by both personal experience and a gap in mental health care. Exposure therapy works, but it isn’t reaching enough of the people who need it most.

For those who live with a phobia, the experience is isolating. Exposure therapy, the gold standard for treatment, involves gradual, repeated encounters with the feared object or situation. It’s effective but often out of reach. Finding the right therapist, arranging real-world exposures, and covering the costs can feel overwhelming. Too often, people never seek help at all.

The silent weight of phobias

Phobias affect over 10 million adults in the UK, while anxiety disorders more broadly contribute to an estimated £300 billion annual economic burden. Traditional therapy is highly effective, but constrained by:

- Limited availability of trained therapists

- High costs per session

- Logistical and safety challenges in recreating phobia triggers

On the other hand, many digital-first solutions swing too far in the other direction - offering DIY apps that cut therapists out entirely, leaving users without clinical guidance. Both approaches fall short. The need is clear: accessible therapy that keeps human connection at its core.

A therapist-led VR platform, built with Unity

Rephobia bridges that gap by combining evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy with immersive VR. Built in Unity, our interactive environments let people gradually face their fears - from spiders to public speaking - in a safe, controlled, and customizable way.

Therapists remain central to the process, guiding sessions in real time, adjusting difficulty levels, and tracking progress. This approach preserves clinical oversight while removing barriers such as safety risks, high costs, and geography.

Building immersive therapy environments requires both technical flexibility and clinical precision. Unity’s engine gives us that balance. By leveraging Unity’s VR frameworks and physics systems, we can design interactive scenarios where phobia triggers behave in a realistic yet controlled way. Our environments are built using modular assets, which allows therapists to scale difficulty, for example, by adjusting proximity, quantity, or intensity of the trigger - while keeping the user safe within VR.

Unity’s cross-platform support is also key. We can develop once and deploy across a range of headsets, ensuring therapists and clinics aren’t locked into a single device ecosystem. This flexibility means a single library of scenarios can be adapted and updated over time, without costly redevelopment.

From a development perspective, Unity enables rapid prototyping and iteration. We can test environment design in real time, refine interaction mechanics based on therapist feedback, and ensure each scenario aligns with exposure therapy principles. Combined with Unity’s performance profiling and rendering tools, we can optimize for smooth, reliable sessions - essential for maintaining a sense of presence and minimizing VR fatigue.

From individuals to the NHS: A scalable path forward

Our early research is promising. In collaboration with the QUest program, we surveyed more than 400 people with phobias. The majority expressed strong interest in VR treatment, citing accessibility, affordability, and therapist support as top priorities.

The benefits are clear:

- Local access to therapy, without needing real-world triggers on site

- Therapists can address multiple phobias with a single VR headset

- Reduced costs for clinics and patients alike

- Scalable treatment pathways for systems like the National Health Service

For individuals, this means a practical, empowering path forward. For therapists, new tools to enhance their practice. And for healthcare systems, the potential to ease backlogs and improve outcomes.

Clinical trials, validation, and scaling for impact

The next stage of Rephobia’s journey is clinical validation. With Unity for Humanity’s support, we are preparing upcoming trials that will test the efficacy of therapist-led VR against traditional exposure therapy. This evidence will form the foundation for regulatory approval as a medical device.

Looking further ahead, our vision is to scale across the UK and beyond, working with therapists, clinics, and eventually the NHS to make phobia treatment more widely accessible. Unity funding helps us expand our library of phobia environments, refine therapist tools, and build toward a future where technology and human care work hand in hand.

Rephobia: Redefining what’s possible beyond fear

Rephobia isn’t just about VR technology - it’s about restoring possibility to people whose lives have been shaped by fear. With Unity, we’re not just building virtual environments. We’re building bridges to a life defined by courage, one session, one step, and one fearless moment at a time.