New Generation of Virtual Humans Helping to Train Psychologists
Rizzo showed videos of clinical psychiatry trainees engaging with virtual patients called "Justin" and "Justina." Justin is a 16-year-old with a conduct disorder who is being forced by his family to participate in therapy. Justina, the second and more advanced iteration of this technology, is a sexual assault victim who was designed to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder...Holy House of Mirrors, Batman.
Rizzo's virtual reality laboratory is working on the next generation of virtual patients using information from this and related user tests, and will further modify the characters for military clinical training, which the U.S. Department of Defense is funding, he said. Some future patients that are in development are virtual veterans with depression and suicidal thoughts, for use in training clinicians and other military personnel how to recognize the risk for suicide or violence.
Psychiatrists already overlook real symptoms all the time. This nonsense just adds another layer of abstraction and reinforces the circular groupthink that is the foundation of their profession.
My italics, just to point out the focus of all research these days.
