Schizophrenia is a mental illness that requires the use of cognitive treatments to decrease symptoms in which the use of medication is less effective. Innovative strategies such as the use of Virtual Reality (VR) are being tested, but there is still a long way into developing solutions as effective as the current conventional forms of treatment. To study more effective forms of developing these systems, an immersive VR game with a tutorial and two levels of difficulty was developed. Tests were performed in twenty-one healthy subjects, showing promising results, indicating VR’s potential as a complementary approach to conventional treatments for schizophrenia. When properly applied, the use of VR could lead to more efficient and accessible treatments, potentially reducing its costs and reaching a broader population.

Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder that affects 1 in every 300 people worldwide. This study intended to perform a systematic review to describe the state-of-the-art of interventions involving patients with negative symptoms of schizophrenia that use Virtual Reality (VR) games as a complement to therapy, and to analyze the key features of such games. Literature research was conducted in three databases, namely, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Scopus, and PubMed, to identify relevant publications dated from 2010 to 2021. Of the initial 74 publications found, only 11 satisfied the eligibility requirements and were included in this study. The results were then organized and displayed in a flow diagram. Overall, the results from the studies suggest that the use of VR in therapies enables an increase in social skills and a decrease in anxiety symptoms. The use of such technology in therapy has proven to be effective, although it still lacks features to provide better long-term results.

Serious games is a field of research that has evolved substantially with valuable contributions to many application domains and areas. Patients often consider traditional rehabilitation approaches to be repetitive and boring, making it difficult for them to maintain their ongoing interest and to assure the completion of the treatment program. This chapter reviews serious games and the natural and multimodal user interfaces for the health rehabilitation domain. Specifically, it details a framework for the development of serious games that integrates a rich set of features that can be used to improve the designed games with direct benefits to the rehabilitation process. Highlighted features include natural and multimodal interaction, social skills (collaboration and competitiveness), and progress monitoring. Due to the rich set of features supported by the framework, the games' rehabilitation efficacy can be enhanced primarily from an increase in the patient's motivation when exercising the rehabilitation tasks. A preliminary test of the framework with elderly users is described.

Serious Games is a field of research that has evolved substantially with valuable contributions to many application domains and areas. Patients often consider traditional rehabilitation approaches to be repetitive and boring, making it difficult for them to maintain their ongoing interest and to assure the completion of the treatment program. This paper reviews Serious Games and the natural and multimodal user interfaces for the health rehabilitation domain. Specifically, it details a framework for the development of Serious Games that integrates a rich set of features that can be used to improve the designed games with direct benefits to the rehabilitation process. Highlighted features include natural and multimodal interaction, social skills (collaboration and competitiveness) and progress monitoring. Due to the rich set of features supported by the framework, the games' rehabilitation efficacy can be enhanced primarily from an increase in the patient's motivation when exercising the rehabilitation tasks.