Reducing the Schizophrenia Stigma: A New Approach Based on Augmented Reality
Open accessAbstract
Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disease that usually manifests psychotic symptoms and affects an individual’s functionality. The stigma related to this disease is a serious obstacle for an adequate approach to its treatment. Stigma can, for example, delay the start of treatment, and it creates difficulties in interpersonal and professional relationships. This work proposes a new tool based on augmented reality to reduce the stigma related to schizophrenia. The tool is capable of simulating the psychotic symptoms typical of schizophrenia and simulates sense perception changes in order to create an immersive experience capable of generating pathological experiences of a patient with schizophrenia. The integration into the proposed environment occurs through immersion glasses and an embedded camera. Audio and visual effects can also be applied in real time. To validate the proposed environment, medical students experienced the virtual environment and then answered three questionnaires to assess (i) stigmas related to schizophrenia, (ii) the efficiency and effectiveness of the tool, and, finally (iii) stigma after simulation. The analysis of the questionnaires showed that the proposed model is a robust tool and quite realistic and, thus, very promising in reducing stigma associated with schizophrenia by instilling in the observer a greater comprehension of any person during an schizophrenic outbreak, whether a patient or a family member.
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Simulation platforms have shown controversial results, with some studies showing increased stigmatization when used through simulation of hallucinatory symptomatology.
“By contrast, the use of simulation platforms has showed controversial results, with some studies showing an increase of stigmatization when used through the simulation of hallucinatory symptomatology, which can promote negative beliefs and attitudes toward people with mental illness [18,19].”
From Innovative Technology–Based Interventions to Reduce Stigma Toward People With Mental Illness: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (2022) · cites this paper as [19]
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- Authors
- Silva, R. D. D. C., Albuquerque, S. G. C., Muniz, A. D. V., Filho, P. P. R., Ribeiro, S., Pinheiro, P. R., & Albuquerque, V. H. C.
- Affiliations
- Universidade de Fortaleza (BR)
- Hospital de Messejana (BR)
- Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Ceará (BR)
- Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (BR)
- Programa de Pós-Graduação em Informática Aplicada, Laboratório de Bioinformática, Universidade de Fortaleza, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil
- Corresponding author
- Albuquerque, Victor Hugo C.
- Venue
- Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017
- Volume
- 2017
- Pages
- 1-10
- ISSN
- 1687-5265 (ISSN-L)
- 1687-5273
- PMC
- PMC5727661
- OpenAlex
- W2773471941
- Cited by
- 47
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 4 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 5.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (301928/2014-2)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Augmented Reality Applications
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
- Keywords
- schizophrenia, stigma reduction, augmented reality, immersive virtual environments, medical students, empathy, mental illness awareness, audiovisual effects
- MeSH terms
- Virtual Reality, Attitude to Health, Humans, Surveys and Questionnaires, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenic Psychology, Students, Medical, Social Stigma
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