* Early trial showed patients gained control over voices
* Patients learn to stand up to tormentors using avatar
* Schizophrenia affects around one in 100 people worldwide
By Kate Kelland
LONDON, May 29 (Reuters) – 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 then synchronises the avatar’s lips with its
speech, enabling a therapist to speak to the patient through the
avatar in real time. The therapist encourages the patient to
oppose the voice and gradually teaches them to take control of
their 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,” Professor
Julian Leff, who developed the therapy, told reporters.
“The therapy helps patients gain the confidence and courage
to confront the avatar, and their persecutor.”
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that affects around
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,” the professor of mental health sciences at
University College London told the briefing.
In the pilot study, three of the patients, who until the
trial had been tormented by voices for between 3-1/2 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.
As a result of the early success, the medical charity The
Wellcome Trust has given Leff’s team 1.3 million pounds ($2
million) to test the therapy in a larger group of patients.
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.
“The beauty of the (avatar) therapy is its simplicity and
brevity,” he said. “Most other psychological therapies for these
conditions are costly and take many months to deliver.”
He added that if the larger trial proved successful, avatar
therapy could be widely available within a few years, since the
technology is relatively simple and many mental health
professionals already have the skills needed to deliver it.
(Editing by Alison Williams)
