Influence of Virtual Reality on Negative Symptoms and Quality of Life of Patients With Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analysis: Influence de la réalité virtuelle sur les symptômes négatifs et la qualité de vie des patients atteints de schizophrénie : une méta-analyse.

Background: Schizophrenia brings about diverse challenges to patients, their families and society. It is up to the healthcare system to effectively resolve these concerns and benefit all involved parties. With the emerging development and adaptation of virtual reality (VR), this may offer a new direction and potential for treating people with schizophrenia. Our goal was to employ meta-analysis to evaluate the influence of VR on the clinical outcomes and quality of life in people with schizophrenia.

Methods: We performed an extensive screening of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining the effect of VR on the clinical outcomes in people with schizophrenia. Our search included the scientific databases PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library, and included RCTs from the date of database establishment till 1 June 2023 and we followed a strict study of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The meta-analysis was conducted in RevMan 5.4.

Results: We selected 963 patients from 10 RCTs. Relative to other forms of interventions, VR therapy considerably alleviated overall clinical (SMD = -4.33, 95% CI = [-6.92, -1.74], P = 0.001) and negative symptomology (SMD = -1.38, 95% CI = [-2.46, -0.30], P = 0.01) among in people with schizophrenia. In contrast, no significant improvements were observed in positive symptoms or quality of life among these patients. Further subgroup analyses of the results indicated that there were differences in the improvement of negative symptoms among patients across the different interventions (P = 0.01).

Conclusions: Based on our meta-analysis, VR-based treatment regimen significantly improves overall and negative symptoms in people with schizophrenia. Further exploration is warranted to elucidate the influence of VR on patient positive symptoms and quality of life.