Virtual reality in social skills training programmes for people with schizophrenia

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Ana Catarina Nogueira
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/17556
• topic: Schizophrenia; Social Skills Training; Virtual Reality

Schizophrenia charecterized by disruptions in thought processes, perceptions, emotional responsiveness, and social interactions. The social skill deficits often predate the onset of schizophrenia, are presente at the first episode, are stable over time in the absence of psychosocial treatment and are predictors of relapse and rehospitalization. Social skills training is na efficacious intervention specially to reduce negative symptoms and to improve social functioning for pepople living with schizophrenia. The use of virtual reality has been proposed as a possible strategy to overcome these conventional social skills training programs’limitations. The purpose of this scoping review was to design a social skills training program for people with schizophrenia using virtual reality. The inclusion criteria were English language, published between 2010 and 2020, adult, participants diagnosed with schizophrenia, and using virtual reality for training social skills. Studies in wich the participants had another mental illness, psychopathological instability, with interventions without using virtual reality and in wich social skills are not measured, were excluded. Virtual reality proved to be effective for training social skills in people with schizophrenia. Virtual reality can add many advantages to the treatment of schizophrenia, having provedto be effectve for training social skills. In future studies it would be importante to confirm that VR can effectively complemente traditional treatments.