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THE terrifying voices inside a schizophrenic patient’s head are being brought to life though video-game style avatars as part of a revolutionary new treatment.
Allowing patients to “meet” and treat the hallucinatory internal voice using virtual reality technology is proving three times more successful than traditional psychotherapy, research in Denmark Canada and the UK has shown.
The first Australian trial of the tech – run by Swinburne University and funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council – is due to start enrolling 200 participants in July.
Swinburne psychologist associate professor Neil Thomas, who is leading the trial, said it was hard to treat patients experiencing voices.
This is because they...