Abstract
Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness, characterized by the loss of the notion of reality, failing to distinguish it from the imaginary. It affects the patient in life’s major areas, such as work, interpersonal relationships, or self-care, and the usual treatment is performed with the help of anti-psychotic medication, which targets primarily the hallucinations, delirium, etc. Other symptoms, such as the decreased emotional expression or avolition, require a multidisciplinary approach, including psychopharmacology, cognitive training, and many forms of therapy. In this context, this paper addresses the use of digital technologies to design and develop innovative rehabilitation techniques, particularly focusing on mental health rehabilitation, and contributing for the promotion of well-being and health from a holistic perspective. In this context, serious games and virtual reality allows for creation of immersive environments that contribute to a more effective and lasting recovery, with improvements in terms of quality of life. The use of machine learning techniques will allow the real-time analysis of the data collected during the execution of the rehabilitation procedures, as well as enable their dynamic and automatic adaptation according to the profile and performance of the patients, by increasing or reducing the exercises’ difficulty. It relies on the acquisition of biometric and physiological signals, such as voice, heart rate, and game performance, to estimate the stress level, thus adapting the difficulty of the experience to the skills of the patient. The system described in this paper is currently in development, in collaboration with a health unit, and is an engineering effort that combines hardware and software to develop a rehabilitation tool for schizophrenic patients. A clinical trial is also planned for assessing the effectiveness of the system among negative symptoms in schizophrenia patients.
Highlights
Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness, characterized by the loss of the notion of reality, failing to distinguish it from the imaginary
This paper addresses the use of digital technologies, namely Virtual Reality (VR), Game-Based Learning (GBL), Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Advanced Data Analytics (ADA), in the development of innovative rehabilitation techniques, contributing to the promotion of well-being and health in a holistic perspective, focusing, mainly on mental health rehabilitation in people diagnosed on the schizophrenia spectrum
The results propose that VR is a highly promising intervention for refractory auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia, reduction in depressive symptomatology, and enabling patients to gain a better quality of life [34]
Summary
Schizophrenia corresponds to a group of disorders with heterogeneous etiologies and includes people with variable clinical presentations, response to treatment, and course of illness [16]. The symptoms can be structured in three different groups: (a) positive symptoms, including delusions, hallucinations, formal thought disturbances, and disorganized behavior; (b) negative symptoms, with alogia, isolation and social impoverishment, apathy and abulia, affective flattening, and psychomotor slowing; and (c) cognitive symptoms, described by altered attention, memory loses, reducing intellectual quotient, language difficulties, and degradation of executive functions [18] This disease is chronic and of continuous evolution. The disease progresses with continuously worsening cognitive and negative symptoms, which are primarily responsible for the decrease in functional capacity, loss of autonomy, with impairment in daily activities, social relationships, and emotional processing These symptoms translate into a loss of quality of life, affecting long-term outcomes [19]. Dynamic adaptation of the game to face the player’s characteristics requires a multidisciplinary approach, that includes measuring the player’s behavior signals and his biometric signals to recognize the player’s emotional states and stress levels, in order to adapt specific game features in a dynamic manner and to improve player’s engagement, immersion, excitement, and challenge [40]
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