![]() “The operation of power within this relationship is viewed as crucial…the voice-hearer assum a submissive role characterized by feelings of inferiority and powerlessness that can reflect social relationships more generally,” researchers wrote. In the follow up study, Craig and colleagues described the significance behind the transition of power from persecutor to patient. “While that was the most striking outcome, the wider reductions in frequency and severity of voices reported by many people was also striking.” Although Julian Leff had found this in his first pilot work, we did not really expect to see it repeated in our larger controlled study,” Craig told MD Magazine. “Most dramatic were the people for whom voices stopped entirely. The most compelling evidence, he said, was the number of patients who clearly improved with therapy. Researchers behind a recent follow up study published in The Lancet set out to recreate those results in a larger, powered, randomized controlled trial, and again found that patients experienced favorable outcomes, with 83% meeting the primary end point - a reduction in auditory verbal hallucinations at 12 weeks.įor the study’s lead author Tom K J Craig, PhD, FRCP, emeritus professor of social psychiatry at King’s College London, the positive results came as a surprise. On the other hand, the control group experienced no changes during the study period. 003), and in the Omnipotence and Malevolence subscales of the Revised Beliefs About Voices Questionnaire (BAVQ-R) of 5.88 ( P =. Patients who underwent the novel AVATAR therapy showed mean reductions in total Psychotic Symptom Rating Scale (PSYRATS) auditory hallucinations of 8.75 ( P =. Results of the pilot study were encouraging. Instead of propagating a relationship where the persecutory voice dominates a submissive patient, the therapist could control the avatar so it would slowly yield control to the patient as time passed. Patients were then encouraged to engage in a dialogue with the avatar, who was controlled by a therapist. The therapy allowed patients to create an avatar, or visual representation of the source of their perceived auditory hallucinations, known as the “persecutor,” whose speech closely matched the pitch and tone of the persecutory voice in their heads. ![]() AVATAR, an acronym for Audio Visual Assisted Therapy Aid for Refractory auditory hallucinations, began garnering attention when it was pilot tested as a treatment for patients with auditory hallucinations between 20 by the UK’s National Institute for Health Research. Current therapies help to ease hallucinations in many patients, but for roughly a quarter of people with psychotic conditions, available treatments just aren’t enough.Įnter AVATAR therapy. ![]() About 65% of patients with schizophrenia experience verbal auditory hallucinations, typically in the form of voices that emanate from perceived “others,” who tend to fit a common unsavory profile - they're domineering, derogatory and unremittingly hostile.
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