Liu Shiqiu, Tang Shuaibo, Tan Youguo, Xiang Bo
Department of Psychiatry, Fundamental and Clinical Research on Mental Disorders Key Laboratory of Luzhou, Medical Laboratory Center, Laboratory of Neurological Diseases & Brain Function, Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, Sichuan Province, China.
Zigong Mental Health Center, Zigong, Sichuan Province, China.
Can J Psychiatry. 2025 Sep 2:7067437251372186. doi: 10.1177/07067437251372186.
Schizophrenia brings about diverse challenges to patients, their families and society. It is up to the healthcare system to effectively resolve these concerns and benefit all involved parties. With the emerging development and adaptation of virtual reality (VR), this may offer a new direction and potential for treating people with schizophrenia. Our goal was to employ meta-analysis to evaluate the influence of VR on the clinical outcomes and quality of life in people with schizophrenia.
We performed an extensive screening of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining the effect of VR on the clinical outcomes in people with schizophrenia. Our search included the scientific databases PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library, and included RCTs from the date of database establishment till 1 June 2023 and we followed a strict study of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The meta-analysis was conducted in RevMan 5.4.
We selected 963 patients from 10 RCTs. Relative to other forms of interventions, VR therapy considerably alleviated overall clinical (SMD = -4.33, 95% CI = [-6.92, -1.74], = 0.001) and negative symptomology (SMD = -1.38, 95% CI = [-2.46, -0.30], = 0.01) among in people with schizophrenia. In contrast, no significant improvements were observed in positive symptoms or quality of life among these patients. Further subgroup analyses of the results indicated that there were differences in the improvement of negative symptoms among patients across the different interventions ( = 0.01).
Based on our meta-analysis, VR-based treatment regimen significantly improves overall and negative symptoms in people with schizophrenia. Further exploration is warranted to elucidate the influence of VR on patient positive symptoms and quality of life.
精神分裂症给患者、其家庭和社会带来了各种挑战。有效解决这些问题并使所有相关方受益是医疗保健系统的责任。随着虚拟现实(VR)的不断发展和应用,这可能为治疗精神分裂症患者提供新的方向和潜力。我们的目标是采用荟萃分析来评估VR对精神分裂症患者临床结局和生活质量的影响。
我们对研究VR对精神分裂症患者临床结局影响的随机对照试验(RCT)进行了广泛筛选。我们的检索包括科学数据库PubMed、Embase、科学网和考克兰图书馆,并纳入了从数据库建立之日至2023年6月1日的RCT,我们遵循严格的纳入和排除标准研究。荟萃分析在RevMan 5.4中进行。
我们从10项RCT中选取了963名患者。相对于其他形式的干预措施,VR疗法在很大程度上缓解了精神分裂症患者的总体临床症状(标准化均数差[SMD]=-4.33,95%置信区间[CI]=[-6.92,-1.74],P=0.001)和阴性症状(SMD=-1.38,95%CI=[-2.46,-0.30],P=0.01)。相比之下,这些患者的阳性症状或生活质量没有显著改善。对结果的进一步亚组分析表明,不同干预措施的患者在阴性症状改善方面存在差异(P=0.01)。
基于我们的荟萃分析,基于VR的治疗方案显著改善了精神分裂症患者的总体症状和阴性症状。有必要进一步探索以阐明VR对患者阳性症状和生活质量的影响。