A Virtual Reality Game to Assess OCD Symptoms

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms are often underreported due to patient reluctance and private triggers, complicating clinical recognition.
• Virtual reality (VR) offers a novel approach to assess OCD symptoms within a clinical setting.
• A VR game was developed to elicit subjective and physiological OCD symptoms for diagnostic purposes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate if the VR game provokes more OCD symptoms in patients compared to healthy controls.
• To determine if performing virtual compulsions reduces emotional responses in OCD patients.
• To investigate the correlation between VR-game-provoked symptoms and OCD severity.

Main Methods:

• 26 OCD patients and 26 healthy controls played a VR game while physiological measures were recorded.
• Emotional responses, virtual compulsions, and physiological arousal were measured during VR game exposure.
• Correlations between emotional responses, virtual compulsions, and OCD severity (Y-BOCS) were analyzed.

Main Results:

• OCD patients exhibited significantly higher VR-provoked anxiety and virtual compulsions compared to controls.
• Performing virtual compulsions led to a significant reduction in emotional responses among OCD patients.
• No significant correlation was found between emotional responses, virtual compulsions, and Y-BOCS scores; baseline HRV differed between groups.

Conclusions:

• The developed OCD VR game successfully provokes anxiety and virtual compulsions in OCD patients, validating its use.
• This VR tool can serve as a direct, patient-rated measurement in clinical settings for assessing core OCD symptoms.
• The VR game holds potential for improving the recognition and assessment of obsessive-compulsive disorder.