Title
Extended Reality (XR) in Psychiatry: How to prevent real harms of virtual risks.
Abstract
Extended reality (XR) applications provide promising future prospects for expanding diagnostic and therapeutic options in psychiatry and psychotherapy. The approaches are complex and innovative. There is a well-founded hope of being able to offer even seriously ill patients interventions in the future that will lead to an improvement of their mental condition. However, although VR is already used in clinical settings to help people with mental disorders (e.g., exposure therapy), the related ethical issues require greater attention. This presentation will highlight the ethical tensions that can arise when using XR in psychiatry. It will also put forward the hypothesis that patients with psychiatric disorders may be particularly vulnerable to virtual interventions. The aim here is explicitly not to exclude these patients from virtual interventions, but rather to work on strategies that enable safe exposure.
About Marla
Maria Marloth is a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy and holds a Master’s degree in philosophy. She works at the Department of Psychiatry at the University Hospital of Cologne. Her clinical focus is on the diagnosis and treatment of affective disorders. Her scientific focus is on the interdisciplinary reflection of extended reality (XR) in psychiatry.