Virtual Reality Avatar Therapy for People Hearing Voices

Abstract

Hearing voices is probably the worst kind of acoustic hallucinations, it can be experienced as severely disturbing and burdensome. It is influenced by diverse factors, one of them being the ability to interact and control the hallucinatory experience itself. In recent years, virtual reality has increasingly become a treatment option for those suffering from psychiatric disorder in general, and those with acoustic hallucination in particular. The goal of this thesis is the development of the technical part of a new therapeutic approach called Virtual Reality Avatar Therapy. It allows patients with acoustic hallucinations to design and customize a visual and auditory recreation of the avatar to which they attribute their acoustic hallucination. They can interact with their avatar in a virtual environment, while a therapist remotely controls the avatar and speaks through it using voice modification and lip synchronization. The created system will be used at the Psychiatric University Hospital of Zurich in clinical and research practice; including a study to investigate the efficacy and feasibility of Virtual Reality Avatar Therapy of people hearing voices. The System Usability Scale (SUS) is used to evaluate the functionality and operability of the system by the medical and therapeutic staff actually performing the therapy. The SUS yields a global score of 78.85 out of 100; showing a good benchmark for the usability and acceptance of the system, and all components to support the clinical trial are provided.