00:00What's going on in your mind is in front of you, and that's quite scary.
00:04What if the best way to quiet a hallucinated voice is to bring it to life?
00:09In Denmark, researchers are digitally recreating voices patients hear
00:12and letting them confront them face to face in virtual reality.
00:16We simulated that in VR, engaging them in a dialogue with these voices,
00:21just a seven-session, very brief intervention,
00:24and what we saw was that it had a very remarkable effect on some patients.
00:30Vivica Annesen has lived with schizophrenia for more than 30 years and heard voices for 27.
00:36They told me that I was not worth living as a human being.
00:44Nobody cared about me, and nobody would need me if I was not there.
00:51In 2020, Annesen joined a VR trial where a therapist spoke in a recreated version of the voice she heard
00:57while she practiced challenging it.
00:59Præden has followed her again.
01:05It doesn't work. I believe more on Præden than I believe on you.
01:10About the four or fifth session, I was so much in mentally pain that they told me that I better
01:24drop off this treatment.
01:26But I was still stubborn, and I thought, no way, I'm going to do this treatment to the end.
01:35In a trial with 270 patients, researchers found the treatment reduced the severity of hallucinations after 12 weeks,
01:42and patients also heard voice less frequently.
01:45For Annesen, the change was dramatic.
01:47After seven sessions, she stopped hearing voices.
01:50I came to my last treatment after Christmas, and I said, I don't have to say goodbye to something which
01:57is not there.
01:58So I left the session and said, I think I'm cured.
02:03Researchers still do not know exactly why VR can help.
02:07One hypothesis is that making an invisible symptom, something patients can see, hear, and respond to,
02:13gives them greater control over it.
02:15We also call it externalization, that we make this visual and auditory representation of what they are actually experiencing inside
02:24their head,
02:25this isolated phenomenon of a symptom.
02:28Five years after treatment, Annesen says she still doesn't hear voices, and she finally got to start a new chapter
02:34in her life.
02:35I'm free. I'm living my life as I always have dreamt of.
02:41I have left the Danish psychiatry as a patient.
02:46Now I'm a former patient, and I've started studying now again after more than 30 years.
02:56I'm studying to become a social worker.
02:59The research group has expanded VR therapy across psychosis, eating disorders, social anxiety, autism, and depression.
03:07Some of these treatments are also being used in Denmark's psychiatric services.
03:11The team is also planning to test whether AI could help support patients in the future.
