Dear users,
I am a psychologist from Hamburg (Germany). As many of you might know, 3-D virtual realities are increasingly used to treat people with anxiety disorders to step-by-step confront them with situations they typically avoid due to exaggerated and unjustified fear (e.g. spiders, social events, height etc.). Learning in a virtual environment that initial fear finally decreases and can be coped with eventually encourages many patients to re-conquer their real environment (in fact, many patients, for example with agoraphobia, never leave the house). For a scientific project we would like to transfer this idea to people with schizophrenia who hear voices and feel persecuted for no reason (note: this is not split personality). We would like to set-up two basically similar environments located in two office complexes. The patients should navigate through the buildings one at a time and will see faces of employes through glass doors, some neutral, some in a good mood and some in a bad mood. The story plot is that the patient is going to job interviews and has to cross floors etc. to finally arrive at the designated office for the appointment (here the scenario ends). In one scenario the patient is going to a job interview in a media enterprise and while going through the floors will hear loud music that by most people's opinions would be called stressful (we can apply this via earphones so this does not have to be part of the programming). As stress in many patients enhances feelings of being watched and spied at we would like to see if in this scenario patients afterwards indeed report to a greater extentthat the employes they saw through the glass doors were hostile or looking at angrily him/her. Since both environments are virtually the same except for a somewhat different floor arrangements, we can later use this feed-back to teach patients that it was the stress that guided their interpretation and not the situation per se as in fact no one was looking at them. Although the levels of stress are low, we will consult the ethics commission for approval.

We would like to add this program in our existing treatment program for schizophrenia patients entitled metacognitive training: www.uke.de/mkt which we provide free-of-charge to psychologists and psychiatrists.

My question:

Since I am unable to program myself, I would be grateful if one of you could set-up the environment for us. I am aware that this is probably a lot of work. However, the person will not only be credited as additional author on potential scientific publications but in case we receive grant money for the idea (e.g. National Institute of Health or German Research Foundation) we can later reimburse the person. However, while we can promise co-authorship we cannot promise reimbursement in advance as not all grant applications are finally funded. Again, our idea is to provide schizophrenia patients with correcting experiences and use 3-D as a tool to alter misperception. The study will be conducted for the sake of the patients' health and not only to observe interesting effects.

I would be grateful for your response and help.

Very kind regards,

Steffen


Steffen Moritz, Ph.D.
Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie
Martinistraße 52
20246 Hamburg
moritz@uke.uni-hamburg.de
GERMANY

Wrong forum!
Can somebody move this thread, please?

Dark_Samurai

g'day!

this belongs in the User Requests or Jobs Offered forum. don't worry about making another thread; a moderator should move it there sooner or later.

it's an interesting idea. is it to be interactive? or will it be a scripted fly-through? does it have to look realistic?

i don't know if i would be able to commit to this just yet, but hopefully someone will. it wouldn't be very hard to make, at first glance.

julz

Hi JulzMighty,
thanks for your quick reply. The program does not have to be interactive. Only the patient/client will navigates through the scenes. However, if possible, when the person passes offices, from time to time, someone looks at him as a natural reaction when you see someone coming. There has to be no talk. I was thinking about a sequence of entrances, several hallways and open offices. In both scenarios 20 people can be seen that mostly ignore the person going through and just do their work.
I do not need a professional graphic environment.
Kind regards, Steffen

Hi,
sorry, you are probably correct. I have already posted the message under requests so there is no need to move it - delete if necessary. However, I still think that it is interesting to discuss the *future* therapeutic usage of 3-D realities in general. Many patients are too anxious to approach phobic situations/objects in the real world and the step-by-step confrontation can be very helpful. Also, at least in Germany there are often 6-months wait list for people seeking help from a psychologist. Programs may assist (perhaps not replace) therapy.
However, that is probably beyond the scope of this forum so please excuse the misplaced message.

Kind regards, Steffen

absolutely, but the *future* forum is for requests for engine/editor features. so even a general discussion on therapeutic usage of 3D realities is probably for the Game Design section (yes, i've been here for a while).

anyway, good luck finding someone to do it. if i do find myself with the time to have a prototype up i'll let you know.

julz

Moved this to User Requests. Good luck with finding someone for that job.

Stefan, I would be willing to pitch in. I am not a programmer per se', however what you are porposing on the surface appears to be a simple matter of pre-built template use. Having someone look up as you pass is easy enough to do with triggers or proximity detection. The music and sounds from the various offices and surrounding areas could use proximity detection as well.

The hardest parts, in my opinion, would be the character modeling and the level design. If you could provide some drawings or images of what you envision for a floorplan and some character reference shots, I'd be willing to do some work in my spare time. I don't animate, but perhaps someone else will make a generous offer.

My committment to delivery is as yours for remuneration. I will commit to providing a few models, a simple script (code) and a basic level, based on your input, at my own pace, but promise nothing more.

Hey, it's free, and if you are on the up & up, it's for a good cause.

Shoot me a Private Mail and we can sort out some details.

Cheers!
Mark

EDIT: Do not post offensive, unrelated messages.

If you still need help, I am a modeler and a animator who would be willing to put some time into this. Drop me a pm and I will see what I can do.

Good Luck,
DoofGuy