What is the potential of virtual reality in clinical and forensic psychiatry? An overview of current procedures and possible applications

Virtual reality (VR) applications have already been successfully used in the diagnostics and treatment of psychiatric disorders for 20 years. After approximately 5 years there are now the first examples of the application of VR in the context of forensic psychiatry. The most important advantage of VR for forensic applications is the possibility to develop realistic, safe and highly controllable virtual diagnostics and learning environments. In this way practitioners can treat or assess criminal offenders in scenarios that would otherwise be risky, unethical or ecologically invalid. This article presents various study examples of current applications of VR for clinical treatment and diagnosis of patients as well as examples for the prognosis and therapy of criminal offenders. This overview shows that VR can now also be a promising tool in forensic psychiatry, which can supplement or extend already established instruments. Applications of VR can also be helpful in the training of forensic psychiatric personnel, as can be seen in some promising results of training studies with virtual patients; however, before they can be implemented into routine professional life, extensive research is needed in this field. Before the introduction of VR applications in research and practice, not only the advantages but also the disadvantages of VR must be taken into consideration and special attention should be paid to the ethical guidelines, which have been developed for this purpose. The continuous development and the increasingly widespread use of VR in clinical and forensic psychiatry imply that VR also has the potential to become an established instrument in research and therapy.