LONDON - Psychiatrists are developing a system that can help people with schizophrenia control and sometimes silence the tormenting voices in their heads by confronting a computer avatar of them.
In a pilot study of 16 patients who underwent the British experimental treatment, known as "avatar therapy", doctors found almost all of them reported a reduction in how often they heard voices and how severe the distress caused by them was.
The first stage in the therapy is for the patient to create a computer-based avatar by choosing a face and a voice for the entity they believe is talking to them.
The system synchronises the avatar's lips with its speech, enabling a therapist to speak to the patient through avatar in real time.
"Even though patients interact with the avatar as though it was a real person, because they have created it they know that it cannot harm them, as opposed to the voices, which often threaten to kill or harm them ," said Professor Julian Leff, who developed the therapy .
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that affects about one in 100 people worldwide. Its most common symptoms are delusions and auditory hallucinations, or hearing voices.
Leff said patients often told him the voices were the worst feature of their condition. "They can't think properly, they can't concentrate, they can't work and they can't sustain social relationships," said the professor of mental health sciences at University College London.
In the pilot study, three of the patients, who until the trial had been tormented by voices for between three-and-a-half and 16 years, stopped hearing them completely after working with the avatar system.
Each therapy session was also recorded and given to the patient on an MP3 player "so that the patient essentially has a therapist in their pocket which they can listen to at any time when harassed by the voices", Leff said.
Thomas Craig, a psychiatrist who will lead the larger trial at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said auditory hallucinations were particularly disturbing for patients and can be extremely difficult to treat successfully.
Patients learn to face tormentors with avatar
LONDON - Psychiatrists are developing a system that can help people with schizophrenia control and sometimes silence the tormenting voices in their heads by confronting a computer avatar of them.
In a pilot study of 16 patients who underwent the British experimental treatment, known as "avatar therapy", doctors found almost all of them reported a reduction in how often they heard voices and how severe the distress caused by them was.
The first stage in the therapy is for the patient to create a computer-based avatar by choosing a face and a voice for the entity they believe is talking to them.
The system synchronises the avatar's lips with its speech, enabling a therapist to speak to the patient through avatar in real time.
"Even though patients interact with the avatar as though it was a real person, because they have created it they know that it cannot harm them, as opposed to the voices, which often threaten to kill or harm them ," said Professor Julian Leff, who developed the therapy .
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that affects about one in 100 people worldwide. Its most common symptoms are delusions and auditory hallucinations, or hearing voices.
Leff said patients often told him the voices were the worst feature of their condition. "They can't think properly, they can't concentrate, they can't work and they can't sustain social relationships," said the professor of mental health sciences at University College London.
In the pilot study, three of the patients, who until the trial had been tormented by voices for between three-and-a-half and 16 years, stopped hearing them completely after working with the avatar system.
Each therapy session was also recorded and given to the patient on an MP3 player "so that the patient essentially has a therapist in their pocket which they can listen to at any time when harassed by the voices", Leff said.
Thomas Craig, a psychiatrist who will lead the larger trial at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said auditory hallucinations were particularly disturbing for patients and can be extremely difficult to treat successfully.
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