One of the more agonizing symptoms of schizophrenia is the hearing of voices in the patients head. Psychiatrists are in the midst of creating a method to help with this symptom through the use of computer avatars, according to Reuters.
The pilot study incorporated 16 patients. Most of the patients who underwent the British-based “avatar therapy” reported a decrease in the amount of times they heard voices and the amount of stress produced from hearing those voices.
The process begins with the construction, by the patient, of an avatar on a computer. They select both a face and voice to match the person or thing they think is speaking to them in their mind.
Next, the computer system matches the avatar’s lips to move congruently with its words. This gives the therapist the ability to act as the avatar—or voice in the patients head—and have a conversation with that patient. During the treatment, the therapist pushes the patient to challenge the voice and instructs the patient on how to slowly take charge of the hallucinations.
"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 and their family," said the therapy’s developer Professor Julian Leff as he spoke to the press. “The therapy helps patients gain the confidence and courage to confront the avatar, and their persecutor."
According to Leff, who is a professor of mental health sciences at University College London, patients said the voices they hallucinated were often the most stressful symptom of the mental illness.
"They can't think properly, they can't concentrate, they can't work and they can't sustain social relationships," he said.
Results from the pilot study showed that three of the participants—whose history of hearing voices spanned from 3.5 to 16 years—ceased to hear voices in their head after using the avatar therapy.
The particpants were also given an MP3 recording of their therapy session "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 added.
A medical charity called The Wellcome Trust gave Leff and his fellow psychiatrists 1.3 million pounds, or $2 million, for their work.
Thomas Craig is the psychiatrist who will run a greater study at the King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry. He said the voices heard in the head of patients are extremely annoying and are a part of symptom that is hard to cure.
"The beauty of the (avatar) therapy is its simplicity and brevity," he explained. "Most other psychological therapies for these conditions are costly and take many months to deliver."
Since the materials and skills needed for the therapy are fairly easy to develop and accessible for psychiatrists, Craig said if the treatment works it could be available around the world in a couple years.
