Social Cognitive Therapy in Virtual Reality for Early Psychosis VEEP 1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
VIRTUAL REALITY AS A METHOD OF DELIVERING SOCIAL COGNITIVE THERAPY IN EARLY PSYCHOSIS [VEEP]
IRAS ID
228308
Contact name
Andrew Thompson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Warwick
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN41443166
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 31 days
Research summary
Many people with psychosis struggle to engage with traditional face-to-face treatments. This is especially true for service users who have difficulties with social cognition (how people make sense of the social world) and social functioning (how people get along with others). Therapies designed to improve social cognition and social functioning usually involves working with people individually or in groups. However, many services users find it difficult to attend face-to-face therapy; for example, when motivation to leave the house is low. New technologies like ‘virtual reality’ (VR) and ‘virtual worlds’ are an exciting new area of development with huge potential to help service users with psychosis overcome some of their anxieties about attending face-to-face therapy, at least in the initial stages, as VR therapies can be delivered at a person’s home (a less threatening environment).
This project has two phases: i) adapting an existing social cognition training package to a virtual world using service users experts, researchers and computer designers (this phase has already been completed) ii) testing if a small number of service users in their first episode of psychosis use and like this adapted package.
We will measure: i) how feasible it is to complete the intervention (that is, how many people consent to take part in the research, how many service users use and complete the package); and ii) how acceptable the package is to service users using interviews (do people like using VR). Our main interest is how usable the VR world is to service users. However, we are also interested in whether social cognition and social functioning improve at the end of the treatment. After this study, we will use our findings to plan a larger study that would allow us to properly test if this package improves service user’s social skills and social functioning.
REC name
West Midlands - Solihull Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/WM/0340
Date of REC Opinion
3 Nov 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion