NCT06450665

Reducing Social Avoidance Among Adolescents With Special Educational Needs

• Status: Not Yet Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 208 (estimated)
• Sponsor: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 16 Years – 19 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to examine the effectiveness of a Virtual Reality (VR) social avoidance intervention in reducing social avoidance symptoms among adolescents with special educational needs. Participants will complete tasks in the VR scenario with increasing difficulty and learn that they can cope in situations that they previously avoid. We hypothesize that, comparing with usual care (i.e. waitlist control), the intervention group will experience a significant reduction on social avoidance symptoms after treatment and this benefit will persist till 1-month follow-up.

Detailed description

Over the past 25 years, VR has been used to complement therapist-delivered psychological interventions, primarily exposure therapy for anxiety related disorders. VR renders real-world social interactions simulation, which allows users to experience an anxiety provoking situation with a greater sense of control. In Hong Kong, with the lack of mental health professionals being a perennial problem, VR-based interventions offer the potential to substantially reduce the treatment time and cost, as well as to increase access to evidence-based psychological interventions. The Virtual Reality (VR) social avoidance intervention used in the current study is designed based on cognitive-behavioral approach with a virtual coach acting as the therapist. It is designed in tandem with input from Hong Kong users to ensure the scenario can resonate with them.

Conditions

• Social Avoidant Behavior
• Social Anxiety

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	VR Social Avoidance Intervention	The intervention is based on cognitive-behavioral approach with a virtual coach acting as the therapist. It will be designed in tandem with input from Hong Kong users to ensure the scenario can resonate with them. By testing beliefs that inhibit confidence in a safe and controlled environment, participants will complete tasks with increasing difficulty in three VR scenarios and learn that they can cope in situations that they previously avoid.

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-06-20
• Primary completion: 2025-02-28
• Completion: 2025-05-31
• First posted: 2024-06-10
• Last updated: 2024-06-10

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Hong Kong