Journal review 3

Therapists Use Virtual Worlds to Address Real Problems

Karen A. Frenkel April 2009 scientificamerican.com

This article focuses on Joe, a troubled teenager from New Jersey, who has had multiple run-ins with the law, ran away from home many times, and has trouble controlling his anger. Somewhat ironically, one of the main methods therapists use to get patients to the core of their own problems is by pretending to be in a situation and imagining, or acting out, what your reaction might be. According to Joe's social worker, Heather Foley, this technique was essentially hopeless when taking in to account Joe's ADHD and confrontational nature. Because of this, Foley enrolled Joe in to a programme that aims to treat teens using environments that are familiar to them - virtual environments. This specific virtual world is known as SECTER - Simulated Environment for Counselling, Training, Evaluation and Rehabilitation. Within SECTER is the ability for patients to communicate with their therapists in a 3-D virtual world using avatars. 

Once a week for eight weeks in a row Foley and Joe sat at computers in her office and have their avatars communicate with each other, the article notes that this is in a similar way to things like Second Life. This article also states that as well as helping with personality disorders such as Joe's, virtual worlds have and/or are being used to treat Asperger's Syndrome, Bulimia, Stroke victims, alcholism, and anxiety disorders, providing links to sources. In this particular instance, however, Foley role-played as Joe's adoptive Mother whom he used to run away from. In SECTER he apparently fled Foley's avatar mimicking his real life response. Foley followed him with her avatar though to apparently instill in him that she would not give up on him, nor could he wiggle his way out of the conversation.

This article doesn't go too far in depth on certain things, such as the ethics, or what/who had Joe put in to the programme specifically, so it does leave a lot to wonder as to how SECTER was initially created, and why, and by who etc., though the article does vaguely state which companies created it. 

According to the article, by the third session Joe started to like his avatar because he could change his appearance according to his mood - if he was upset he would make his avatar invisible, if he was happy he would put on an Ambulance driver's uniform. Foley's breakthrough came at the end of the seventh session when she used the "after action" feature where she wanted Joe to see the interaction from the perspective of his adoptive Mother. Joe said "I looked ridiculous because of how I acted." which is essentially the desired outcome. Instead of blowing up or becoming defensive, he calmly told his adoptive Mother's avatar that he felt abandoned and rejected by her, something that Foley estimates could have taken over six months without SECTER.  

Health and virtual worlds is something that seems to be increasingly popular, if not more openly discussed. From the other articles that I've read through the one thing that everybody can agree on is that virtual worlds affect everyone differently, as there is really no way to predict or measure how well the therapy, or training, whatever it may be, works until either it does or it doesn't.