Leveraging Augmented Reality for Understanding Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a serious mental health disorder which may include symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized behavior. In addition to experiencing a diverse symptomatology, individuals with schizophrenia suffer from significant stigmatization which can interfere with effective treatment of the disorder among other issues. As a primary source of stigmatization comes from healthcare professionals, we were motivated to explore new ways in which to educate healthcare students about the symptoms of schizophrenia. Despite its potential to immerse users in new experiences within a real environment, little research concerning the use of augmented reality (AR) to simulate schizophrenia exists. In this paper, we present Live-It, a tool designed using recommendations from prior work as well as inspiration from lived experiences to educate mental health students about schizophrenia. The simulation uses the video passthrough capabilities of the Meta Quest 3 headset to simulate delusions, auditory hallucinations and additional symptomatology. Using thematic analysis, we evaluated our simulation with nineteen students and eighteen experts in healthcare to understand its ability to engage users and reliably represent symptoms of the disorder, as well as to determine how best to improve upon the design before the tool is widely deployed in mental health curricula. Our findings suggest that participants better understood symptoms of schizophrenia after experiencing the simulation, highlighting the potential of Live-It to be used as an educational tool. We present our design, provide a detailed analysis of our findings, and underline next steps in the development of our tool.
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A participant interacting with the homework assignment in the simulation. She sees her responses broadcast on the TV in the background.
Left: A participant during the study. Right: the virtual computer screen seen within the environment.
The news report the participant sees on the television. The scrolling banner shows a participant’s response to the question: How do you deal with stress? The response reads: According to Tom, I rationalize and break down the problem.