New Psychiatric Technique Asks Schizophrenics to Engage in Dialogue With the Voices in Their Heads
Image by Getty / Futurism Researchers have come up with an ingenious new approach to treating psychosis: creating an “avatar” for the often upsetting voices in one’s head and talking to them like they’re real, living people. As The Guardian reports, there have now been multiple clinical trials displaying the power of this so-called “avatar therapy.” Case in point, a new paper in the journal Nature Medicine demonstrates that giving voice and face to the dark forces inside the heads of people who suffer from auditory hallucinations can be a promising treatment strategy. Like customizing a character in a video game, people who undergo this experimental treatment create digital avatars that resemble or symbolize the voices they hear. Some people are talked down to by cruel authority figures and others are menaced by demons — and by creating an externalized avatar on a screen and having a therapist simulate the things they say, those persecuting voices can often be controlled. It’s a deceptively simple scheme that has time and again borne out promising results. These digitally-assisted interventions …
