According to Dillon, the virtual therapy works as well as or better than face-to-face therapy in all areas. In addition, clients in the virtual program participate in almost two-and-a-half times as many activities and remain connected with their therapy for over twice as many days as clients attending in-person sessions, he says.

Still, virtual worlds have some risks. Immersive 3D platforms are tailor-made for role playing, which is great for games and training simulations but could lead to creative yet inappropriate behaviors. That's a problem in public settings like Second Life. "I was doing a presentation to an audience of attorneys in Second Life, and I was on IBM's island and a very inappropriately dressed avatar walked up to me and began to engage in what appeared to be a romantic overture," says Robert Scott, managing partner at Texas-based intellectual-property and technology law firm Scott and Scott.

Private virtual worlds aren't completely safe, either. "Because it's virtual," Scott says, "employees might feel there's some ambiguity."

in CIO's Web Productivity Drilldown.