In a recent study published in Discover Mental Health, a team of researchers led by Indiana University examine how virtual reality can be used to help individuals in their recovery from substance abuse, as this study holds the potential to create more conducive methods in treating substance abuse.
"VR technology is clinically effective and increasingly common for treating a variety of mental health conditions, such as phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder and post-operative pain, but has yet to find wide use in substance use disorders intervention or recovery," said Dr. Brandon Oberlin, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine, and a co-author on the study. "Capitalizing on VR's ability to deliver an immersive experience showing otherwise-impossible scenarios, we created a way for people to interact with different versions of their future selves in the context of substance use and recovery."
The study is four years in the making, where the research team designed a virtual environment involving “future-self avatars” who the user can interact with while the avatar uses their same voice along with using personal details in alternate futures.
"This experience enables people in recovery to have a personalized virtual experience, in alternate futures resulting from the choices they made," explains Dr. Oberlin. "We believe this could be a revolutionary intervention for early substance use disorders recovery, with perhaps even further-reaching mental health applications."
Since May 2022, Dr. Oberlin’s research team has been awarded $4.9 million from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), along with federal scientific research institutes with the National Institute of Health (NIH) and a $319,542 Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I research grant, which will all be used to progress their research.
"The ultimate goal of our work is to leverage state-of-the-art VR technology for providing therapeutic experiences to support early recovery -- a very dangerous time period marked by a high risk for relapse," said Dr. Oberlin. "Last year marked another grim annual record for drug overdose deaths in the United States, with over 100,000 estimated deaths. New innovations in treatment and recovery are desperately needed, and we are hoping that IU's innovative research efforts will answer this call."
Sources: Discover Mental Health
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