Tag: pain

Reading of the Week: Technology & Psychiatry – Can Virtual Reality Help with Pain? Or Social Anxiety?

April 20, 2017 /

From the Editor

VR. e-therapies.

New technology is changing the way we think about the delivery of psychiatric services. But new isn’t necessarily better. Can care really be transformed? What does the literature say?

U.S. President Barack Obama tries virtual reality glasses as he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) tour Hanover Messe Trade Fair in Hanover, Germany April 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

VR: more than just a presidential photo op?

In a two-part Reading of the Week series, we look at technology and psychiatry.

This week, Virtual Reality.

Next week, e-therapies.

This week, we consider a new paper that looks at virtual reality to treat pain in hospitalized patients. The authors find that people utilizing VR have less pain as compared to controls. This finding leads us to another recent paper on VR; in this second study, patients with social anxiety are treated with a VR intervention.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Can a Fake Intervention Help Real Pain? Also, Preventing Depression

March 30, 2017 /

From the Editor 

“To a degree which has never been suspected, what powerful influence upon diseases is produced by mere imagination.” British physician John Haygarth wrote those words more than two centuries ago when considering the placebo effect.

Is it possible to successfully treat people with placebo in an open-label trial? That is, if people know they are taking placebo, will they still experience the benefit of placebo?

painCan a fake intervention help real pain?

In this week’s selection, we look at a new study where participants were offered placebo for back pain. Spoiler alert: it worked.

And, in a new feature for the Reading of the Week, we include an invited letter to the editor from Dr. Albert H. C. Wong who writes about the best way of preventing depression.

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