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Virtual schizophrenia in Second Life

Published in The Aggie on February 22, 2007

Inside the virtual world of Second Life, inhabitants of all shapes, sizes and dress interact in many of the same ways people do in the real world. They own homes, run businesses, shop with Linden dollars and hang out with virtual friends.

Linden Lab, a San Francisco-based technology company, created the 3D virtual world called Second Life. According to the official website, secondlife.com, over 3 million people inhabit that world and almost 20,000 log in every day.

When first signing up, users choose an avatar, or a virtual identity, from a handful of basic male or female figures that they can later adapt to their liking and use to move around inside the virtual world.

Second Life residents are not, however, bound by the rules of the real world. They can fly, design buildings limited only by their imagination and -- in the case of Dr. Peter Yellowlees' virtual psychiatric ward -- give visitors the opportunity to experience some of the symptoms of schizophrenia.

For 20 years, Yellowlees has been teaching about schizophrenia, a severe mental illness that assaults patients with disturbing visual and auditory hallucinations. In September 2006, the UC Davis professor told The Economist magazine that he has never been able to really demonstrate for his students how patients suffer from schizophrenia. Second Life has given him that opportunity.

Yellowlees and his team took photographs of an inpatient ward at the Sacramento County Mental Health Treatment Center and recreated the ward in Second Life. They then added simulations that give every person walking through the ward a taste of the lived experience of schizophrenia. Hallucinations in the ward include the floor disappearing from underfoot, writing on posters that morphs into derogatory words, a pulsating gun that suddenly appears on a table, menacing voices that laugh and urge suicide, a reflection of a face in a mirror that turns deathly gaunt and begins to bleed and other similar effects.

Yellowlees, who recently expanded on his original comment to The Economist, said, "It's so powerful that some get quite upset, but most people find it remarkably interesting and are very positive about the experience."

So far, the virtual psychiatric ward has been powerful and very effective. Along with using Second Life in the medical school program and recently with psychology students, Yellowlees and his team did a pilot study in which general Second Life users toured the virtual ward and then answered simple survey questions. Many expressed an increased understanding of hallucinations.

While Second Life has been open to the public for just over three years, dozens of universities and a handful of museums, libraries and non-profit organizations have already set up facilities within the virtual world. Some hold classes and discussions. Others use the space to promote their real world programs.

Yellowlees' psychiatric ward has been the first to incorporate hallucinatory experiences. With improvement and expansion, the schizophrenia ward and others like it may be used regularly to train medical students, nursing students, hospital staff and others.

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