The Impact of Using an Interactive System and a Paper and Pencil Program in Psychosocial Rehabilitation of Psychiatric Patients
The Impact of Using an Interactive System and a Paper and Pencil Program in Psychosocial Rehabilitation of Psychiatric Patients
Virtual Reality allows the integration of cognitive rehabilitation in a more ecologically valid context.
The purpose of this study is to determine whether this methodology has more impact on psychosocial rehabilitation than a paper and pencil personalized program.
Cognitive impairments are frequently present on many psychiatric diseases, such as schizophrenia, depression, etc. and are not always given sufficient attention despite its limitations in activities of daily living (ADL's). Current cognitive rehabilitation methods mostly rely on paper-and-pencil tasks targeting isolated domains, which is not consistent with everyday life, and have limited ecological validity.
Virtual Reality (VR) has shown to be a solution for the development of accessible and ecologically valid systems but, does it have more impact than a paper and pencil personalized intervention?
Through a participatory design approach, with health professionals, the investigators have developed:
a motor-accessible and cognitive-personalized VR-based system, where conventional cognitive tasks were operationalized in meaningful simulations of ADL's (Reh@City) and; a web tool which generates personalized paper and pencil tasks (Task Generator).
The investigators goal is to have a sample of 30 inpatients from a psychosocial rehabilitation unit, with no age limit, randomly allocated in two groups: 1) the experimental group, where participants will perform 30 minutes of the VR training with Reh@City; and 2) the control group, where participants will perform 30 minutes of the paper and pencil training with the Task Generator.
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria: