Virtual reality

Empowering Social Recovery through Immersive Virtual reality Environments

Introducing Revive, an innovative treatment program specifically designed to support young people with early psychosis.

Delivered by a VR therapist, Revive harnesses virtual social environments to deliver highly effective cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) that guides young people to manage symptoms and overcome social challenges.

By learning to adapt to triggers and master coping strategies in a safe and controlled environment, young people can gain the confidence needed to translate these skills into real-world situations.

vr for ultra-high risk for psychosis

VR is a critical opportunity for social functioning treatment as it provides a safe and carefully controlled space for clinicians to guide young people through virtual social situations in the hopes of helping them overcome anxieties and develop social skills.

Early intervention for psychosis can occur when signs start to emerge and before a full psychotic episode has occurred. This stage is referred to as Ultra-High Risk (UHR) for psychosis and is a stage where effective treatment can aid in preventing the onset of a full psychotic episode.

Social difficulties, including unhelpful social behaviours like avoiding others, is an early warning sign of the UHR stage and is a factor that can contribute to the progression of a full episode.

Treatments to help improve social difficulties hold promise for prevention, but targeting social difficulties is best achieved in the real world where social interactions naturally happen and re-creating this within clinical settings is hard.

Revive uses VR to provide personalised therapeutic social experiences to young people at UHR by teaching and supporting them to engage positively with others aimed at overcoming current barriers to effective treatments.

Revive is led by Dr Roos Pot-Kolder, a world leader in using VR for psychosis treatment. It involves developing and testing a VR intervention that targets social processes in a sample group of young people at the UHR stage. The study aims to alleviate social impairment earlier in the ill mental health journey for young people so that there is an optimal chance for young people at this stage to have a healthy social development journey.

VR for alleviating social impairment is new and innovative and provides an early intervention opportunity. It may help young people by giving them extra support to learn and function in their social environment in a controlled setting.