Give Voices In Your Head A Virtual Body And They'll Go Away
Avatars Made By Patients via BBC A recent study showed that schizophrenic patients who put an avatar to the voices they were hearing ended up hearing the voices less. This might be an unexpected way to treat schizophrenics hearing a disembodied voice: embodying the voice. In the U.K., psychiatrist Julian Leff tried an experiment to treat patients hearing voices. He had a group of patients put a face to the voice by having them create a virtual avatar through custom computer software. Then Leff talked to the patients through the on-screen avatars. At first, he told the BBC, he tries to make the patients realize the voices, like the avatars, aren't real: "I encourage the patient saying, 'you mustn't put up with this, you must tell the avatar that what he or she is saying is nonsense, you don't believe these things, he or she must go away, leave you alone,...