Hallucinations, Verbal Auditory

Rationale: Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) - hearing voices that others cannot hear - are common in mental illnesses. For many people AVH are distressing, disabling and persistent, despite medication. Current psychological interventions show low to medium effects. Preliminary studies suggest that an innovative empowering psychological therapy using computer simulations representing the AVH (avatars) can be effective for reducing AVH distress and frequency. Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to improve this treatment. Therefore, we developed a novel VR treatment for this problem. In this study, the effect of this treatment will be investigated. Objective: To test the effect of a novel VR treatment for AVH (VR-VOICES) on distress and frequency of AVH in patients with a psychiatric disorder. Furthermore, to investigate the effect of VR-VOICES on clinical symptoms, quality of life, and healthcare costs of the treatment.

This open naturalistic study aims to evaluate the efficacy of rTMS in routine practice on auditory resistant hallucinations (AHR) of patients with schizophrenia. To this end, two stimulation methods will be offered to patients: the rTMS stimulation method and the cTBS stimulation method.We principally use the AHRS scale to evaluate the effectiveness of rTMS on RAH in patients with schizophrenia. Our main hypothesis is that rTMS used under naturalistic conditions, in addition to antipsychotics, would allow a relative improvement of resistant auditory hallucinations assessed by the AHRS scale between baseline and end of treatment in patients with schizophrenia.