A group of psychiatrists led by Professor Tom Craig from King's College London has developed a new therapy for the treatment of schizophrenic patients, which allows you to get rid of obsessive auditory hallucinations. The method is based on a dialogue with an "avatar" - a computer visualization of the voice "living" in the patient's head. An article by scientists was published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry.
60-70 percent of those with schizophrenia report hearing "voices" inside their heads. Usually, drugs can reduce the severity of symptoms, but one in four patients continue to have hallucinations. As a rule, a person with schizophrenia thinks that the "voice" that pursues him belongs to an entity that has a personality, pursues some goals and has power over the patient. However, doctors have learned to help the "listener" establish a dialogue with the "voices" and establish control over hallucinations.
The therapy, called AVATAR, is based on simulating a "voice" and talking to a person. Preliminary studies with 26 patients have shown that the new approach can reduce the frequency of hallucinations and their power over patients. The new work tested the therapy on 150 volunteers with schizophrenic spectrum disorders (in particular, those with paranoid schizophrenia). All participants were on drugs, but only half of them were prescribed AVATAR therapy. Other patients randomly assigned to a control group were referred for supportive counseling by a psychiatrist.
During AVATAR therapy, participants created a digital image of the face, which, in their opinion, belonged to the "voice". During daily treatment sessions, which lasted 50 minutes, patients were in a separate room in front of a computer monitor. In another room there was a therapist who could talk to patients either in his own voice or through an "avatar". In the early sessions, the doctor said exactly what the participants heard during the hallucinations, but he encouraged the patients to respond. In the future, the "avatar" recognized the presence of human strengths. In total, the therapy lasted one and a half months.
AVATAR therapy has been shown to result in significantly greater reductions in auditory hallucinations than supportive counseling. At the same time, nine participants reported the disappearance of hallucinations at 12 weeks of treatment (seven in the AVATAR therapy group and two in supportive counseling). At the 24th week, there were 14 such patients (eight in the experimental group and six in the control group).
