Finding out whether virtual reality may help individuals feel safer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Finding out whether virtual reality may help individuals feel safer: a pilot study
IRAS ID
215934
Contact name
Daniel Freeman
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
People with persecutory delusions fear that harm is occurring, or is going to occur, to them and that the perpetrator of this has the intention to cause harm (Freeman & Garety, 2000). This means many patients find it difficult to be around others in public. This study is targeted at helping people feel safer around others when outside. Virtual reality (VR) has provided a means of supporting people with persecutory delusions to access environments which they might usually avoid by recreating virtual social environments. This allows individuals to practice entering feared situations in an interactive computer programme before practising in the real world. Virtual reality has been used with patients with persecutory delusions for fifteen years and this study represents the next phase in this research: developing specific techniques to help individuals feel safer around others.
The present study is a pilot feasibility case series to examine whether problem solving coaching delivered in VR is a safe and feasible method to help people with persecutory delusions feel safer. Fifteen people with current persecutory delusions where they feel under threat in public will be recruited from Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. All will practice a repeated process of explaining their difficulties feeling threatened when outside to a coach in a virtual room. Five participants will act as a control group. The other ten will additionally practice hearing their problems from the perspective of the coach, giving advice back to them, and then hearing this advice from their own perspective again. The advice will be designed to help the person disengage from their paranoid thoughts when in public. All fifteen participants will then practice entering a virtual public environment. This early stage pilot will examine the tolerability and feasibility of such a treatment protocol.
REC name
South Central - Oxford C Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/SC/0618
Date of REC Opinion
6 Dec 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion