How Can a Driving Virtual Reality Tool Improve Quality of Life and Social Autonomy in Patients With Schizophrenia

Summary

Schizophrenia is a mental health issue that affects mostly young adults. The main symptoms are hallucinations, delirium, and agitation, poor social relations, lack of motivation, thought disorganization. Also, patients suffering from schizophrenia encounter important cognitive disorders affecting memory, executive functioning and attention. These cognitive alterations are often linked to social exclusion and stigmatisation.

Antipsychotic treatments are effective mainly on the positive dimension of symptoms (hallucinations etc…); however their action is very limited on the cognitive difficulties encountered. Psychosocial techniques can be used to treat the cognitive symptoms, such as cognitive remediation or psychosocial rehabilitation .

These cognitive difficulties mainly have an impact on patients' daily life, affecting their abilities to drive, for example. Schizophrenic patients suffer more road accidents than healthy subjects .

Thus, considering this information, it appears important to us to address this driving problem for various reasons:

* Firstly, knowing how to drive is often linked to daily autonomy,
* Secondly, driving is also linked to keeping an active social network and to work.

Patients suffering from schizophrenia often encounter difficulties in learning how to drive which reinforces the stigmatisation and fear of failure.

Thus, a specific driving and theory training prior to driving lessons could be a way of helping patients in their cognitive difficulties and pass their driving test. Daily transports mobilize a number of cognitive functions (attentional vigilance, working memory, psychomotor coordination, divided attention, visuo-spatial abilities .

Using a driving virtual reality tool could constitute an ecological cognitive remediation tool, by simulating daily driving situations. This "serious game" approach enables us to involve virtual reality in training but also in assessments. The driving simulator allows standardized evaluations and could also become a therapeutic tool of ecological cognitive remediation.

This study thus appears interesting in order to develop road safety and daily autonomy.

Conditions

• Schizophrenia

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Virtual reality driving stimulation program

This group will benefit of 14 one hour sessions, using the driving simulator. The program is based on a progressive training, focused on the remediation of the cognitive functions specific to driving. The tool and the type of training aim to help transfer the abilities to daily life.

BEHAVIORAL

TAU

This group will carry on their usual treatment during the whole length of the study. Patients will be randomized into the 2 groups. This TAU group will be the control group and will help assess the effectiveness of the stimulation program. The stimulation sessions will be proposed to the TAU group at the end of study.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Hôpital le Vinatier

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• ROMAIN REY, PH · CH Le Vinatier

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

50 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-06-25

Primary Completion

2019-12-30

Completion

2019-12-30

Countries

• France

Study Locations