Reducing Social Avoidance Among Adolescents With Special Educational Needs

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Social Anxiety; Social Avoidant Behavior

Treatments: Behavioral: VR Social Avoidance Intervention

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06450665

HSEARS20240214005

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this clinical trial is to examine the effectiveness of a Virtual Reality (VR) social avoidance intervention in reducing social avoidance symptoms among adolescents with special educational needs. Participants will complete tasks in the VR scenario with increasing difficulty and learn that they can cope in situations that they previously avoid. We hypothesize that, comparing with usual care (i.e. waitlist control), the intervention group will experience a significant reduction on social avoidance symptoms after treatment and this benefit will persist till 1-month follow-up.

Full description

Over the past 25 years, VR has been used to complement therapist-delivered psychological interventions, primarily exposure therapy for anxiety related disorders. VR renders real-world social interactions simulation, which allows users to experience an anxiety provoking situation with a greater sense of control. In Hong Kong, with the lack of mental health professionals being a perennial problem, VR-based interventions offer the potential to substantially reduce the treatment time and cost, as well as to increase access to evidence-based psychological interventions.

The Virtual Reality (VR) social avoidance intervention used in the current study is designed based on cognitive-behavioral approach with a virtual coach acting as the therapist. It is designed in tandem with input from Hong Kong users to ensure the scenario can resonate with them.

Enrollment: 208 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 16 to 19 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Age 16-19
• Can read traditional Chinese and understand Cantonese
• Self-report on experiencing social avoidance symptoms

Exclusion criteria

• History of photosensitive epilepsy
• Impairment of stereoscopic vision
• Balance problems

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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208 participants in 2 patient groups

VR Social Avoidance Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention group will go through three 30-minute VR sessions over a period of 3 weeks. Participants will need to complete a baseline survey before the VR sessions and a post-intervention survey after the VR sessions, as well as a 1-month follow-up survey.

Treatment:

Behavioral: VR Social Avoidance Intervention

Waitlist Control

No Intervention group

Description:

The wait-list control group will complete the questionnaires in the same interval as the intervention group, with promise of receiving VR intervention after 1-month follow-up is over.