EVEN - Effects of VR on Empathy for Nature in Patients With Psychosis and Depressive Disorders

Recruiting

• Conditions: Schizophrenia; Depressive Disorder; Healthy Control
• Interventions: Device: VR application

• Registration Number: NCT06446856
• Lead Sponsor: Charite University, Berlin, Germany

Brief Summary

Study group: Experimental study to evaluate empathy, compassion, and nature connectedness before and after an immersive virtual reality experience in patients with depressive disorder, patients with psychotic disorder and healthy control subjects (subjects between 18 and 65 years of age).

Primary hypothesis: The increase in nature connectedness explored by virtual body ownership of a tree in VR differs depending on the health condition (schizophrenia, depression, healthy controls).

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Status Verified: 2024-05
• Study First Submitted: 2024-05-25
• Study Start: 2024-05-27
• Study First Submitted QC: 2024-05-31
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-05-31
• Study First Posted: 2024-06-06
• Last Update Posted: 2024-06-06
• Primary Completion: 2024-08-01
• Study Completion: 2024-08-01

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 60

Inclusion Criteria

• age: 18-65 years
• Inpatients and outpatients treated at the Psychiatric University Clinic of the Charité at St.

Hedwig Hospital

• diagnosis of depressive disorder (ICD-10: F32.X, F33.X) or diagnosis of schizophrenia (F20.X) or healthy controls without psychiatric diagnosis
• able to provide written informed consent

Exclusion Criteria

• Acute suicidality or danger to others
• Primarily treatment-requiring eating disorder
• Acute dermatological condition affecting the hands that can distort skin conductivity measurements
• Control group: psychiatric or psychosomatic pre-diagnoses (except for the psychiatric active control group), other exclusion diagnoses corresponding to the patient group

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
VR study group	VR application	20 patients with depressive disorder
VR healthy control group	VR application	20 patients with no psychiatric disorder
VR active control group	VR application	20 patients with psychotic disorder.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Nature Connectedness	For all groups pre and directly post VR exposure	Measurement of Nature Connectedness as a state with the "Inclusion of Nature in Self" (INS)-Questionnaire (Kleespies et al., 2021), pre and post VR exposure.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Embodiment - Feeling of virtual body ownership	post VR exposure for all groups (within the same session of 1 hour)	Evaluation with a subscale of the Embodiment scale by Ahn et al. (2016) adapted from Slater et al. (2010)
Compassion	For all groups pre and directly post VR exposure (within the same session of 1 hour)	Evaluation of Compassion (state compassion) pre and post VR exposure with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and five integrated items measuring compassion based on Pfattheicher et al., 2015.
Presence in VR	post VR exposure for all groups (within the same session of 1 hour)	Scale according to Ahn et al. (Ahn et al., 2016), adapted from the "Spatial Presence scale" by Bailenson et al. (2005) - own German translation adapted to the virtual Amazon forest area (Spangenberger et al., 2024)
Empathy	For all groups pre and directly post VR exposure (within the same session of 1 hour)	Evaluation of empathy with the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET; (Dziobek et al., 2008) pre and post VR exposure
symptom burden	For the VR study group (patients with depressive disorder) and VR active control group (patients with psychotic disorder) pre and post VR exposure (within the same session of 1 hour)	Measured with the PANAS (see above) and with the Visual Analogue Scale (0-10) measuring the burden of the 3 main symptoms, previously specified during assessment of symptom severity (PANSS; (Kay et al., 1987) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI, Beck et al., 1961))
Spirituality	pre VR exposure for all groups	Evaluation of spirituality using the 4-item short version of the questionnaire "Transpersonales Vertrauen" (Hampel et al., 2019) pre VR exposure.
Virtual Reality Simulator Sickness	post VR exposure for all groups (within the same session of 1 hour)	Cyber Sickness as a potential side effect of VR, measured with the Virtual Reality Sickness Questionnaire (Kim et al., 2018)
Explorative evaluation of electrodermal activity (EDA)	during (approx. 5 minutes) VR exposure	Explorative evaluation of electrodermal activity (EDA), e.g., skin conductance level (SCL) and skin conductance responses (SCR) in micro siemens during VR exposure

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Psychiatric University Hospital Charité at St. Hedwig Hospital; 🇩🇪 Berlin, Germany