1 Department of Psychiatry, Academical Medical Center, University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam, The Netherlands .
2 The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, an Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences , Amsterdam, The Netherlands .
Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2017 Nov;20(11):718-722. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2017.0107.
The retrospective and subjective nature of clinical interviews is an important shortcoming of current psychiatric diagnosis. Consequently, there is a clear need for objective and standardized tools. Virtual reality (VR) can be used to achieve controlled symptom provocation, which allows direct assessment for the clinician. We developed a video VR game to provoke and assess obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms in a standardized and controlled environment. The first objective was to evaluate if the VR game is capable of provoking symptoms in OCD patients as opposed to healthy controls. The second objective was to evaluate the tolerability of the VR game in OCD patients. The VR game was created using a first-person perspective and confronted patients with 15 OCD-specific items, while simultaneously measuring OCD symptoms, including the number of compulsions, anxiety, tension, uncertainty, and urge to control. In this pilot study, eight patients and eight healthy controls performed the VR game. OCD patients performed significantly more compulsions (U = 5, p = 0.003) during the VR game. The anxiety, tension, uncertainty, and urge to control in response to the specific items were also higher for OCD patients, although significance was not yet reached because of the small sample. There were no substantial adverse effects. The results of this pilot study indicate that the VR game is capable of provoking a variety of OCD symptoms in OCD patients, as opposed to healthy controls, and is a potential valuable tool to objectify and standardize an OCD diagnosis.
临床访谈的回顾性和主观性是当前精神科诊断的一个重要缺陷。因此，需要客观和标准化的工具。虚拟现实 (VR) 可用于实现症状的受控激发，从而使临床医生能够直接评估。我们开发了一种视频 VR 游戏，以在标准化和受控的环境中引发和评估强迫症 (OCD) 症状。第一个目标是评估 VR 游戏是否能够引发 OCD 患者的症状，而不是健康对照组。第二个目标是评估 VR 游戏在 OCD 患者中的耐受性。该 VR 游戏采用第一人称视角，向患者呈现 15 个 OCD 特异性项目，同时测量 OCD 症状，包括强迫次数、焦虑、紧张、不确定性和控制冲动。在这项初步研究中，8 名患者和 8 名健康对照组进行了 VR 游戏。与健康对照组相比，OCD 患者在 VR 游戏中表现出更多的强迫行为（U=5，p=0.003）。OCD 患者对特定项目的焦虑、紧张、不确定性和控制冲动也更高，尽管由于样本量小，尚未达到显著水平。没有出现明显的不良反应。这项初步研究的结果表明，VR 游戏能够引发 OCD 患者的各种 OCD 症状，而不是健康对照组，并且是一种潜在有价值的工具，可以使 OCD 诊断客观化和标准化。
