Avatar Therapy Versus Standard Talk Therapy for Persistent Hearing Voices

This trial compares two types of therapy for people who persistently hear critical, abusive, or threatening voices—a symptom that affects many people with schizophrenia and related disorders. One group will receive standard cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is the current best practice. The other group will try avatar therapy, a newer approach where a therapist creates a virtual character that represents the voice you hear, allowing you to practice new ways of responding to it in a safe, controlled setting.

Current treatments for persistent hearing voices have only modest success, leaving many people still struggling despite taking antipsychotic medication. Early research suggests this new virtual avatar approach may produce some of the largest improvements in voice symptoms seen to date, so this trial is testing whether it genuinely works better than standard therapy.