NCT03148639

Virtual Reality Therapy for Treatment-resistant Auditory Hallucinations in Schizophrenia

Emotion Regulation Using Virtual Reality in Schizophrenia: a Clinical and Mechanistic Trial of Avatar Therapy for Refractory Auditory Hallucinations

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 19 (actual)
• Sponsor: Ciusss de L'Est de l'Île de Montréal · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Treatment of verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia is clinically challenging for both the patient and the therapist. For the therapist, one of the main difficulties arises from the impossibility of directly communicating with the entity persecuting the patient. For the patient, the therapeutic process is challenging because it aims at getting to better cope with an entity that keeps repeating stereotyped and abusive sentences without having the emotional strength to reply to the persecutor. To help overcome these clinical challenges, virtual reality enable patients to recreate the face and the voice of their persecutor.The hypothesis is that the engagement of patients in a dialogue with an external representation of their persecutor, with the support of the therapist, would help them to gain better control over their voices.

Conditions

• Auditory Hallucination, Verbal
• Treatment-resistant Schizophrenia

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Avatar therapy	Patients will receive 6 sessions of avatar therapy consisting of 45 minute (1 session per week). The therapy will consist in prompting patients to enter in a dialogue with their persecutor to better regulate their emotional responses. Over the course of the therapy, the character of the avatar will progressively become under patients' control. More precisely, the avatar's speech and tone will gradually be changed by the therapist to echo patients' improved ability to regulate their emotions. That is, the avatar will progressively change from being abusive to becoming helpful and supportive. By doing so, the therapy will seek to reinforce patients' feeling of empowerment over their voices.
OTHER	Treatment-as-usual	Treatment as usual will consist of typical or atypical antipsychotic medication and regulars appointments with psychiatrists and others care team members for a period of 6 weeks.

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-09-01
• Primary completion: 2017-03-31
• Completion: 2017-12-02
• First posted: 2017-05-11
• Last updated: 2018-01-30

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Canada