Active Mental Health Psychology & Behaviour

VR social cognition therapy in early psychosis: effectiveness and implementation

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation The University of Melbourne Source-published name: University of Melbourne
Funding £3.2M
Period Apr 2023 — Mar 2027

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Young people recovering from psychosis will practise navigating social situations inside a virtual reality headset, guided by a therapist, as part of a new treatment being tested in a clinical trial. Psychosis often damages a person’s ability to read facial expressions, interpret tone of voice, and navigate social interactions. These social cognitive impairments are a major reason why people with psychosis struggle to return to work, maintain friendships, or live independently. Existing treatments focus on symptoms like hallucinations and delusions but rarely address these social deficits directly. Early intervention is critical because cognitive skills are most flexible in the first few years after a first episode. If the trial shows the VR therapy works, it could be rolled out as a standard add-on to existing early psychosis services. Instead of practising social skills in a clinic room, patients would practise in realistic virtual environments—a café, a bus, a workplace—where the therapist can control the difficulty and repeat scenarios safely. The research also studies how to embed the therapy into real-world mental health services in Australia and internationally, so it does not remain a lab experiment.

View original technical description
As well as specific symptom clusters, psychosis effects important non-symptom domains including social cognition and social-occupational functioning. Impaired social cognitive ability is one of the most important drivers of poor functional outcome with consequent impact on quality of life. Early intervention approaches for psychosis are clinically and cost-effective and provide a key treatment opportunity when impairments in cognition are most malleable and functional outcomes can be maximised. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has been identified as a revolutionary tool because it addresses current treatment challenges of engagement, potency and generalisation of effects. VR research in psychosis has demonstrated its safety and ecological validity. The proposed project aims to enable the co-production and the evaluation (through a double blind RCT) of a new VR-based therapy, harnessing the latest technology, in order to improve the social cognition and social functioning in young people with first episode psychosis (FEP) or who are at Ultra High Risk (UHR) for psychosis. With a strong grounding in implementation science and partnerships within clinical services, this study also aims to understand how the treatment can be embedded as an adjunct to existing treatments for psychotic disorders to enhance mental health services for young people across Australia and internationally.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Cali Bartholomeusz (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Immersive virtual reality to transform the lives of patients with psychosis
Virtual Reality for Visions (VRV): a proof of concept study examining the development of a new treatment for distressing visual hallucinations in people with psychosis.
Cognitive Assessment and Training using Virtual-Reality in Schizophrenia Patients
Immersive Virtual Reality Cognitive Treatment (VRCT) for persecutory delusions.
Using Virtual Reality Assisted Therapy for Social Anxiety in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Case Series | C4C

Original classification

Directed Call

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.