Abstract
Virtual Reality (VR) has been widely used in psychiatry, including psychotic disorders. The main advantage of VR is its high ecological validity and controllability of the virtual environment. Our main goal was to test whether, similarly to computer-generated VR, 360-degree videos are able to elicit a state of social paranoia in prone individuals. Sixteen schizophrenia patients and twenty-three healthy individuals were assessed using Leibowitz Social Anxiety Scale and additionally, in the patient group, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS-6) and Peters Delusional Inventory (PDI) were used. The participants viewed four 360-degree videos with and without social content on a VR headset. Meanwhile, subjects' heart rate was measured continuously. After the exposure, both groups were assessed with Social State Paranoia Scale (SSPS) and asked about momentary anxiety and sense of presence. The schizophrenia patients reported higher momentary anxiety, although the results of SSPS did not differ significantly between groups. In the control group the heart rate decreased between first non-social and social video, whereas in the patient group it did not differ significantly. There was a significant correlation of paranoid ideation experienced on daily basis (PDI) and elicited in VR (SSPS) in the patient group. In conclusion, paranoid responses can be triggered in patients with schizophrenia by 360-degree videos.
Highlights
Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that has begun to be used intensively in the field of psychiatry for at least two decades
Paranoid responses can be triggered in patients with schizophrenia by 360-degree videos
The groups differed in Leibowitz Social Anxiety Scale and momentary anxiety at measurement 1 and measurement 2 – higher values of both scales were observed in the patient group
Summary
Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that has begun to be used intensively in the field of psychiatry for at least two decades. In VR the gap between the real experience and the simulation of that experience becomes much smaller This is expressed by a strong sense of presence, which is the feeling of “being inside” the virtual environment. There have already been several hundred publications on the use of this technology in the development of theoretical concepts, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness. Despite concerns that people with psychosis may be reluctant to use virtual reality, as a large proportion of them may hold delusional beliefs towards new, unfamiliar technologies, mainly for fear of being spied on, the findings to date do not support this notion. Based on the results of one systematic review [6], psychotic patients did not exhibit distress related to VR-based research procedures and did not experience an increase in psychotic symptoms after VR exposure. In one study [7] did a participant drop out due to an increase in psychotic symptoms during the exposure, which may have been related to the relatively stressful procedure – the impact of social stress in VR was investigated
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