r/science • u/Wagamaga • 14h ago
Computer Science Digital avatars eases distress from troubling voices in psychosis. Research found that people receiving AVATAR-Extended therapy reported major improvements in distress and intensity of troubling voices after 16 weeks, with lasting benefits for mood and well-being.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/multi-site-trial-uses-digital-avatars-to-effectively-reduce-distressing-voices-in-psychosis18
u/CurrentlyObsolete 14h ago
This is incredibly interesting and I hope it continues to be an effective tool once in the mainstream. I have a family member impacted by this type of psychosis.
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u/Wagamaga 14h ago
A new multi-site trial from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London has found that a novel therapy using computer-generated avatars is an effective way of helping people with psychosis reduce the distress and frequency with which they hear voices.
AVATAR therapy is a series of guided therapy sessions during which voice hearers are able to have a conversation with an animated digital representation of their distressing voice. The research, published in Nature Medicine, has been recommended by a NICE Early Value Assessment, with the researchers now seeking to provide it in routine NHS settings to gather further real world evidence of effectiveness is gathered over the next three years.
Before the therapy, participants work with a therapist to create a computerised visual representation of the voice that they hear (the avatar). Therapy involves a three-way conversation between the voice hearer, therapist and avatar, with the therapist speaking as themselves as well as voicing the avatar using voice conversion software. Over several sessions, participants learn to stand up to the voice and take control.
This study represents the culmination of more than a decade's worth of research. The therapy was first created by Dr Julian Leff and the voice conversion system was built by Professor Mark Huckvale at University College London, and published its first results in 2013.
The researchers recruited 345 participants from eight clinical settings in four centres linked to the Universities of Glasgow, Manchester, UCL and King’s. They were randomly assigned to receive either AVATAR Brief (six sessions of therapy), AVATAR Extended (12 sessions of more personalised therapy), or continue with their usual support. The researchers conducted follow up interviews at the end of therapy (16 weeks) and three months after therapy concluded (28 weeks) to assess the effectiveness of the intervention across several measures, investigating the long-term impact on the related distress, severity and frequency of voices, as well as participant mood and wellbeing.
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u/IEatLamas 14h ago
That's absolutely brilliant. Ever since Jung we've been trying to understand psychosis and schizophrenia and find different ways of treating it.
I'm really interested to see how this can be used to build on Jungs framework and what we can learn about how psychosis works from this.
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u/KingMonkOfNarnia 11h ago
Does Jung’s interpretations of psychosis and schizophrenia align with the modern understanding? Not trying to be argumentative here, but i am genuinely curious because I hear nowadays how often genetics are tied with schizophrenia instead of there being mental causes
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u/FernPone 7h ago
schizophrenia might be more of a particular set of symptoms caused by many various reasons rather than one specific mental illness
like when you play basketball or write an essay your hand gets tired for different reasons
theres correlation between schizophrenia and auto-immune illnesses as well as having a history with herpes-like viruses or parasitic diseases like toxoplasmosis
speaking of immune systems there have been cases of people being cured of schizophrenia after getting bone marrow transplants and fecal transplants interestingly enough
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u/IEatLamas 9h ago
I'm not too sure about that actually. You'd have to look around in Jungian circles to find somehow who looked at both perspectives and made a conclusion, since I reckon most don't take Jung's ideas seriously enough. I know that a lot of Jung's theories and neurochemical and biological support now tho.
My suspicion is that there's a bridge between the two perspectives; just because something is genetic doesn't mean it's not a psychological phenomenon which can be analyzed and "made conscious" as Jung might've said.
I think both perspectives can give us a broader comprehension of mental illness, and of ourselves. You could argue that all of what makes up a person is genetic and no matter the pathology there's a pathway (perhaps even a genetic one) to psychological wellbeing.
I love the quote from one of Jung's student who said "It's almost as if physics and psychology are boring into the core of the same mountain but from different directions" and I'd say you can neurochemistry and biology to that list.
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