Can an Illusory World Help Treat Psychosis’s Real-World Delusions?

Can an Illusory World Help Treat Psychosis’s Real-World Delusions?

4 years ago
Anonymous $9jpehmcKty

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-an-illusory-world-help-treat-psychosiss-real-world-delusions/

Many people with psychosis suffer from persecutory delusions—beliefs that terrible things will happen to them in everyday situations, such as people trying to harm them. The disorder causes social anxiety, which can be exacerbated by other symptoms, such as hearing voices. All of this makes ordinary activities such as shopping or going to the doctor challenging. Often a person just withdraws entirely from social contact. In a vicious cycle, the ensuing isolation and rumination can exacerbate other symptoms, including those causing the withdrawal.

The idea behind a virtual-reality system called gameChange is to help patients learn to feel safer, allaying social anxiety by putting them in simulations of situations they fear in which their worst dread does not materialize.