Virtual Reality Training for Social Skills in Schizophrenia

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Schizophrenia

In brief

Social impairments are core features of schizophrenia that lead to poor outcome. Social skills and competence improve quality of life and protect against stress-related exacerbation of symptoms, while supporting resilience, interpersonal interactions, and social affiliation. To improve outcome, we must remediate social deficits. Existing psychosocial interventions are moderately effective but the effort-intensive nature (high burden), low adherence, and weak transfer of skills to everyday life present significant hurdles toward recovery. Thus, there is a dire need to develop effective, engaging and low-burden social interventions for people with schizophrenia that will result in better compliance rates and functional outcome. The investigators will test the effectiveness of a novel adaptive virtual reality (VR) intervention in improving targeted social cognitive function (social attention, as indexed by eye scanning patterns) in individuals with schizophrenia. VR technology offers a flexible alternative to conventional therapies, with several advantages, including a simplified and low-stress social interaction environment with targeted opportunities to simulate, exercise and reinforce basic elements of social skills in a very wide range of realistic scenarios, and to repeat exposure to naturalistic situations from multiple angles.

Key facts

Study ID
NCT03128099
Run by
Vanderbilt University
People needed
47
Starts
2016-06-01
Expected to finish
2018-06-30
Last updated by the study team
2020-03-19

Who can join

Age: 21 and older, up to 60. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

Where it is running

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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