Avatar therapy has proved to make voices vanish in schizophrenia

A new therapy has been created for patients who are highly distressed, and Hear Voices. It’s called Avatar therapy, and experts say that it could add a new approach when treating schizophrenia hallucinations. What happens is a psychologist create a face the patient recognizes with the same tone of voice they hear. It’s a newly established therapy that has not gone widespread as of yet that helps people with schizophrenia hallucinations.

About 60 to 70 percent of people diagnosed with schizophrenia hear voices that typically are derogatory and threatening. The insults and negative influences disturb the nature of the victims existence.

Patients are taught to stand up to the simulated avatar to create a feeling of victory against the voices they hear. It’s like stepping up to your fears and letting the issue know you mean business.

Dramatic improvements have been found when patients are treated. With enough encouragement they listen to the insults and respond with a healthy communicative responses. Saying things such as “i will not listen to you any more” or “no i don’t believe you”.

You receive automatic replies from the avatar making the conversation seem more realistic. The goal is to get control of the conversation when speaking to the digital character.

Auditory verbal hallucinations

The patients that experience auditory verbal hallucination sit down in front of a digital representation (avatar) of what they believe is the face and have dialogue. It take great computer simulation to do so. The avatar is basically a talking head, and they have a full conversation with their presumed persecutor. The therapy works on all ages from 18-65 years, and the treatment duration could go through 12 weeks, or 24 weeks. It’s basically one to one therapy, you versus the avatar. The avatar is programmed to become less aggressive and reduces it’s derogatory input over the course.

With supportive counseling alongside the avatar patients reported less auditory verbal hallucination. The therapy for some was very effective, and the group of psychologist that presented the therapy believe is should become a option when performing psychological treatment of auditory verbal hallucinations.

Traditional cognitive behavior therapy

People usually go through traditional cognitive behavior therapy to deal with hearing voices, and there are many tactics when approaching a patient that deals with hallucinations. Traditional cognitive behavior therapy is a lengthy process performed by highly trained therapist. It’s a limited resource that achieves minimal to moderate success when dealing with auditory verbal hallucinations. Avatar therapy has proven to be twice as effective as traditional therapies. Some patients reported that the voices disappeared totally.