VR-based conversation training program for patients with schizophrenia: a preliminary clinical trial.
Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness and is characterized by hallucinations and delusions as well as social skills deficits. Generally, social skills training designed to help patients develop social skills includes role-playing, but this form of training has typical shortcomings, which are largely due to a trainer's difficulties to project emotion. Virtual reality (VR)-based techniques have the potential to solve these difficulties, because they provide a computer-generated but realistic three-dimensional world and humanlike avatars that can provide emotional stimuli. In this paper, we report on a method of implementing virtual environments (VEs) in order to train people with schizophrenia to develop conversational skills in specific situations, which could overcome the shortcomings of or complement conventional role-playing techniques. The paper reports the efficacy of the proposed approach in a preliminary clinical trial with 10 patients with schizophrenia.
Ku
Jeonghun
J
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.
Han
Kiwan
K
Lee
Hyung Rae
HR
Jang
Hee Jeong
HJ
Kim
Kwang Uk
KU
Park
Sung Hyouk
SH
Kim
Jae Jin
JJ
Kim
Chan Hyung
CH
Kim
In Young
IY
Kim
Sun I
SI
D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008297:Male; D016730:Program Development; D012559:Schizophrenia; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D014705:Verbal Behavior