Medical Blog, Avatar Therapy or Computer Voice Assisted Therapy.

Avatar Therapy, or computer voice assisted therapy is targeted at schizophrenics with auditory hallucinations, with whom psychiatric medicines have had no effect.

It is reported that with avatar therapy we can cure 15% of the cases successfully[].

We have at Vayu Vaidya developed a version of avatar therapy which is better than the software developed at __http://www.avatartherapy.co.uk/__________[1], in that a patient can design an avatar from a library of photographs using morphogenesis.com, change the features of this avatar, choose or synthesize a voice, change  it’s pitch and communicate with a psychiatrist remotely, who handles the conversation with the avatar.

The script for the conversation of a patient with an avatar is pre compiled and psychiatrists are trained in this therapy. This therapy is particularly useful for patients with threatening and bullying voices, the psychiatrist uses this therapy to reason out or persuade the voices to back out or change their stance. A high degree of success in annulling these voices has been reported[], and in most cases, where the patients do not turn aggressive, the voices are said to disappear and not return.

We intend testing our version of the software, developed using BotLibre Avatars at HIHT, hospital Dehradun, India. We will be conducting a clinical study to confirm, other published findings  on Avatar Therapy and will be training and licensing psychiatrists in Canada, USA and the Indian Himalayas to use it through ECHO hubs and Tele-Clinics.

1.http://www.avatartherapy.co.uk/