Podcast: Virtual Reality for the Treatment of Schizophrenia – PsychCentral.com

Virtual reality has moved beyond gaming and is an emerging technology in the treatment of schizophrenia and potentially in shaping the portrayal of this mental health condition for younger generations.

Host Rachel Star Withers, a person living with schizophrenia, and cohost Gabe Howard explore how virtual reality technologies are used to help people with schizophrenia.

Deepak Gopalakrishna, the founder and CEO of virtual reality therapy platform Rey, joins to share how Rey is revolutionizing exposure therapy for people with anxiety, PTSD, depression, and schizophrenia.

And later in the show, Barry Gene Murphy and May Abdalla, the producers of Goliath: Playing with Reality, share the inspiration behind their new award-winning virtual reality movie. Goliath: Playing with Reality is the true story of a mans experience with schizophrenia, and is narrated by Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton.

Deepak Gopalakrishna

Deepak Gopalakrishna, the founder and CEO of Rey, is a highly accomplished customer-centric innovator. A seasoned entrepreneur with deep expertise in healthcare, AI, blockchain and digital innovation, he has founded and led the growth of seven companies.

With an MBA and a doctorate in genetics and Molecular biology, Deepak has the unique ability to merge the rigor of a scientist with the creativity of an entrepreneur. The vision for Rey was born: Take the best mental health clinicians in the world and transfer their methodologies into user-friendly automated digital treatments. You can find out more at http://www.getrey.com.

May Abdalla

May Abdalla, the co-director, writer, and executive producer of Goliath: Playing with Reality, is an experimental documentary filmmaker who has won numerous awards for her work in the immersive and interactive arts. She founded the production company Anagram in 2013 to explore immersive technologies, especially in the documentary genre.

Barry Gene Murphy, the director and writer of Goliath: Playing with Reality, is an award-winning filmmaker and artist with over 15 years experience in animation, 3D and special effects, and more recently in mixed-reality works.

Barry Gene Murphy

Goliath: Playing with Reality is Available to download for FREE on Oculus now:

Oculus: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3432432656819712/ Website: https://goliathvr.io/ Discord: https://discord.com/channels/864490434927788072/874057550654472213

Gabe Howard

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author.

Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now cant imagine life without. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Producers Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: Youre listening to Inside Schizophrenia. Hosted by Rachel Star Withers, an advocate who lives openly with Schizophrenia. Were talking to experts about all aspects of life with this condition. Welcome to the show!

Rachel Star Withers: Welcome to Inside Schizophrenia, a Healthline Media podcast, Im your host, Rachel Star Withers here with my incredible co-host Gabe Howard, and this episode of Inside Schizophrenia is sponsored by Intra-Cellular Therapies.

Gabe Howard: Rachel, its always great to be here. Thank you, as always, for having me.

Rachel Star Withers: And, Gabe, last episode, we talked about technology. Our wonderful tech world, and this isnt really a part two, but maybe a little bit were going to get a little bit deeper into a certain type of tech. Let me tell you, Gabe, we are living in the future. Its time to upgrade. So Im pretty excited because today were talking about virtual reality.

Gabe Howard: Rachel, I was not a fan of this topic. First off, virtual reality, I just I have this very 1990s version of virtual reality where it just wasnt very good. And number two, I really struggled to see the application for the treatment of schizophrenia. We have two guests coming up, two incredible guests, that really did an excellent job of showing me not only the treatment applications as it pertains to schizophrenia, but also people who live with schizophrenia have desires and hobbies and need to fill their time just like the rest of us. And I really failed to connect that this is a way for people who are maybe struggling to leave home or maybe dont have a big social group or may be isolated to connect with other people in a very meaningful way. Just right up front, I want to say Gabe was wrong. Rachel was right. This is a common occurrence in our meetings.

Rachel Star Withers: Yes, absolutely, Rachel is always right. Just kidding. Whats amazing is that virtual reality has actually been used in a lot of different ways the past, lets say, going on 30 years now to treat mental disorders, whether its fears, anxiety, depression, PTSD and, of course, schizophrenia. But up until now, its been confined to different labs and trials, stuff that the normal everyday people like you and me, Gabe, we wouldnt have access to. But this has been going on kind of behind the scenes for a while and now were starting to have access to it. So we have these incredible guests coming on here in just a little bit. Our first one is Deepak Gopalakrishna, who is the founder and CEO of Rey, R E Y, and that is a virtual reality therapy system. Our second guest coming on a little later in the show are actually the directors and producers of a movie called Goliath: Playing with Reality, and its the true story of a man with schizophrenia and its incredible and were going to hit all of these guests here in just a little bit. But first of all, lets establish what is virtual reality? Because like you said, Gabe, I think some of us are stuck in the 90s. Were not really sure what exactly that even means. Like, are we talking about Tron, the movie? What are we imagining here? Today what were talking about virtual reality is the immersive experiences and usually for the normal consumers, you buy a headset and then you have like two controllers that you, you know, hold in your hands and they have buttons, but they also kind of track your hand motions.

Gabe Howard: And whats important is that the outside world is largely locked out. Right, so think of it like goggles. In fact, I believe theyre called virtual reality goggles, but there are computer generated environment that you see through your headset and what the user sees and hears is only presented through that headset. So its not like playing a video game where you can talk to your buddies. Its largely immersive. Obviously, if somebody taps you on the shoulder, thats from the outside world, but its just a much more immersive experience than your typical console video game that you would play on your television.

Rachel Star Withers: Yes, completely different than just kind of looking at a screen. With the head set, it is like three sixty. So when you turn your head like youre looking around in the environment, if you were to look downwards at your feet, youre going to see whatever it is they want you to see. So you usually see the floor of the environment, you look up, you see the sky of that environment thats been created. And its much more, I guess, in depth. As far as like the visual field, when I tried it out, well get into, it didnt look like I was just looking at a screen. It definitely was like you could reach out into the environment and feel like you could interact with it.

Gabe Howard: Rachel, would you say another good example would be similar to the 3- D experience at like our local cinema?

Rachel Star Withers: I wish I could say it was like that, but its so much better.

Gabe Howard: Ok.

Rachel Star Withers: Its technology has come so far. That is honestly what I thought it would be like was kind of like that little 3-D like, Oh, no stuff popping out at you. But where were at now, as far as like what me and you can buy on the market for virtual reality, is incredibly impressive.

Gabe Howard: And just to make sure that were on the same page with what were talking about, the headset that Rachel used cost approximately $350. It stands alone. You obviously need content for it, but the hardware is approximately $350. Its not a $10,000 headset running on a $10,000 computer connected to a $10,000 mainframe. Its relatively inexpensive considering everything that you get and its so immersive that it can actually provide exposure therapy. I know Ive stolen the lead from you, Rachel, but what does virtual reality used to treat right now?

Rachel Star Withers: Theres three different ways that VR is being used currently to treat different mental disorders, one of them is exposure therapy, like you said, and thats where it puts you into the situation. Its really great for people who have social anxiety, phobias, fears because they can, like, put you in a bus, they can put you in a subway terminal. Different things like that. Another thing that theyre using it for is cognitive therapy, which we know and love. If youve been to any sort of therapist, youve done some sort of cognitive therapy exercises. Theyre finding new ways to implement pretty much that into the video game atmosphere. But that 360 and I honestly, I do get a little annoyed when I go to the therapist, you know, and they hand me like a journal to fill out. Like it gets kind of old, you know, the fiftieth time you filled out a journal exercise for cognitive therapy. So some of these ones for the virtual reality are like nothing Ive ever experienced. Im hoping more therapists look into this area because I would love the next time I go to a therapy session them to hand me like a video game to do instead of a journal with a little cartoon person on it. Anyway, the other way virtual reality is being used is social skills, and they have seen some amazing areas as far as helping people with autism, adults and children, learning how to function in social situations. And theyre just starting to use the social skill areas for people with schizophrenia, especially if youre coming out of an extended stay in a mental hospital or something. You know, a lot of us have to, kind of, readjust to society. If youre coming off your first major psychotic episode, its scary because you lose a lot of that confidence you had previously. So very interesting ways theyre finding that people of all different backgrounds can use VR.

Gabe Howard: And remember, this is science, this is being studied, it is being looked at, somebody didnt just take a VR headset, plop it on somebody and say, Oh, were accomplishing things. Like everything, it may work for you. It may not work for you. It may work on some issues. It may not work on other issues. Its emerging science, its emerging technology. And as Im very fond of saying in the real world, your mileage may vary, but its exciting to think that new things are coming out because, as Rachel said, if somebody hands her a pencil and paper and tells her to keep a journal one more time, shes going to scream. And largely we have found this in the schizophrenia community that theyre just being asked to do the same things over and over and over again. And while nobody can guarantee that this can work, at least its something new. And for many people who are experiencing, you know that hitting the wall or they want to move past it or whatever, its exciting. And I wanted to point all that out because the guest that you interviewed, Rachel, has been studying this and implementing this for a long time. Hes an expert, and you talked to him. Set him up.

Rachel Star Withers: Yes, so Deepak Gopalakrishna, he is the founder of Rey, and this is pretty much the first platform available to lay folks like us, Gabe, to do VR therapy. Rey is also connected with the Oxford VR and really incredible the stuff that Oxford, the university, has been doing in this area, focusing on trying to help people with different mental disorders, especially schizophrenia, find new ways to treat it using virtual reality.

Gabe Howard: Awesome. All right, well, here we go.

Rachel Star Withers: Joining us now is Deepak Gopalakrishna, who is the CEO and founder of a brand new system called Rey. Thank you so much for being with us, Deepak. Now, right away, I need to ask what is Rey? Tell our listeners what exactly this platform is.

Deepak Gopalakrishna: Sure, but also, thank you for having me on, Rachel. Its really a pleasure to be here. So, Rey is essentially what we term as Mental Health 3.0, where we want to give everyone access to high quality care.

Rachel Star Withers: And what is unique about Rey?

Deepak Gopalakrishna: Theres a couple of things that we have done and that we are built on top of that is very, very unique. When you think about sort of the first iteration of mental health care that was I drive to a doctors office, I park in the parking lot, I walk into the room and I sit down on their chair or on the couch, right? And I talk to someone and maybe we unpack a few problems, etc. Where we are today, for the most part, is I do almost the same thing, except I dont leave my house. I sit here on a Zoom call like we are today and sit in a Zoom room, essentially recapturing the same room, except Im sitting on my own couch. But its still the same thing, and its still you dont know whether youre seeing the right person, whether that person is actually going to get you better. And theres also the next component of that, which is you see that person in the environment within which you need to see that person. So for example, if you want to build up confidence around other people, you dont want to do that just in a one on one setting in a Zoom room. You want to do that on a crowded bus, right? You want to do that in a doctors office. And thats what we do. We would take that person, we download them into a virtual environment and we create the virtual environment that allows people to do everything from sort of, make eye contact, be more confident, challenge things like persecutory beliefs, for example, right? Because it isnt just exposure that solves the thing that you need to solve. You have to practice the skills. You have to be able to be coached to practice those skills in those environments. And thats fundamentally what separates us; access to the high quality clinician in a scalable way, and the ability to do that in the environment within which you need to do it in. And thats actually what gets people better because, and you probably know this, is you can spend years in therapy in a room and never actually be able to translate that into real life.

Rachel Star Withers: To put us in that situation, whats really innovative is that youre using virtual reality, the headsets and everything. Now, tell us, how does that part work?

Deepak Gopalakrishna: Yes, to sort of give people those tools, we create virtual reality environments that actually just demoing our fear of heights product yesterday to someone and we put them on a suspension bridge,

Rachel Star Withers: Wow.

Deepak Gopalakrishna: Right? And let them sort of move across the suspension bridge to the coach and the coach is sort of giving them instructions from the other side. We create the programs, Daniel Freeman, our scientific founder, one of the foremost thought leaders in psychosis, for example, he starts with a clinical brief. We have the artist. We have the engineers. We have other clinicians who all collaborate to build this. We test that in a clinical setting to make sure that it is actually delivering the right kind of outcomes. For example, our fear of heights, it decreases peoples fear of heights by 70% almost in about four weeks, and its just better than pretty much anything else out there, right? Our persecutory delusions that allows people to challenge those persecutory delusions that decreases it by 40% within several sessions. Our social avoidance for psychosis or social avoidance for social anxiety, were dropping it by 50% within six weeks. I mean, these types of things just dont happen in any other way. So we build those things. We test that in clinical settings and then we put those into VR headsets and people who join our clinic, we actually send them headsets and itll show up at your house. Youll have a coach who guides you into sort of actually putting on the headset. I mean, these things are relatively new technology, right? So we help people sort of get into it. And then we have coaching sessions and therapy sessions that are combined with the sessions that you do with the best in the world at what youre trying to get better at.

Rachel Star Withers: Well, what made my ears perk up just now when you were saying that the way youre dealing with delusions. Here at Inside Schizophrenia, a lot of people with schizophrenia, obviously, we deal with delusions, hallucinations. Can you tell us a little bit more about the delusions application?

Deepak Gopalakrishna: And we actually get people to challenge their persecutory delusion beliefs, the belief systems. You have a therapist there with you and you have other people around, youre sort of encouraged and motivated to get closer to that person, make eye contact. So it allows you to challenge those beliefs that these things are actually dangerous for you. And by doing that and sort of doing that in multiple different scenarios, whether thats in a train or in a lift or in a variety of other areas, what we found is that within several sessions we were able to decrease the PSYRATS scores and the outcome score is by about 40%, almost half. It is by challenging those beliefs rather than encouraging the safety behaviors which people often exhibit. Lets get you out of sort of exhibiting those safety behaviors. Lets get you out of sort of exhibiting those safety behaviors, lets highly challenge those beliefs. Lets help you do that in an environment where those quote unquote threats might exist so that when you actually come out of that, you have essentially rewired the brain. The brain is an amazing sort of place. The plasticity of the human brain is exceptional, right? It can learn a lot of new things. Same thing with social avoidance is this building confidence, building of self-assurance, being able to make that eye contact, interacting with other human beings and getting over those fears through a lot of different activities that we might do that essentially take the trigger that elicits that response and reprogram the brain to actually build a new memory.

Rachel Star Withers: Very interesting, I feel some of this its almost a little scary when you think about like what youre saying, like reprograming, pretty much the brain. But I also think that most of us who have schizophrenia or very serious mental disorder, especially ones that deal with psychosis, thats our every day. Were constantly, our reality is already kind of distorted. So I think thats one of the most interesting things when it comes to the idea of treating people who struggle with what is reality and then treating it with virtual reality. Its almost like kind of meeting us where were already at.

Deepak Gopalakrishna: And youre absolutely right, and the brain does perceive. Its the perception of reality, right? Its amazing how it perceives it as real, even though you know that it is not real. But its that its the training and the practice and the cognitive behavioral therapy that happens within these environments that allow us to decrease those types of physiological responses and sort of get the brain back into perceiving things as they should be perceived or as you want to perceive them so as to live more of a normal life. I mean, thats the end goal.

Rachel Star Withers: Rey does seem like another level. And it seems like youre able to actually do these exercises.

Deepak Gopalakrishna: Absolutely. We lets think of it in terms of modalities. You have talk therapy, which is what you do in the Zoom room. You have medication management because I think there is a role for medication. And then what we have is a third modality, which is the ability to practice the skills in the environment that you need to practice that skills. So we offer those first two, but we actually bring an entirely sort of new modality to the table that just fundamentally changes the game and gives people the ability to translate those skills into real life.

Rachel Star Withers: How do you see using Rey for the treatment of schizophrenia?

Deepak Gopalakrishna: It isnt necessarily for a diagnosis per say, but every diagnosis has symptoms and processes that are impacted, right? So you might have social avoidance. You might not want to go meet other people. You might have persecutory delusions or beliefs. You might have other threat factors. You might also have other phobias or you might have attention issues, worry issues, right? So we build programs that actually address those inherent things that people are feeling. So its for prosecutorial delusions, its for worry, its for rumination, its for attention deficit to address those threat beliefs. The social avoidant behaviors also

Rachel Star Withers: Oh, yes.

Deepak Gopalakrishna: Is relatively prevalent in schizophrenia, so thats also something thats really well tested. We had like a 500 person clinical trial. This really, really nice stories that were going to be able to tell pretty soon. Thats sort of how we think for psychosis and schizophrenia that we actually do have tools that no one else has.

Rachel Star Withers: How can our listeners learn more about Rey if theyre interested in getting part of the program, if theyre interested in talking to their doctor about maybe using Rey somehow? Tell them what to do.

Deepak Gopalakrishna: Talk to your doctor. Give them the information, its at GetRey.com, so G E T R E Y .com. So you can either access it directly through our clinicians or, you know, see if your doctor can reach out to us. And were always super happy to work with clinicians around the world. Were happy to work directly with individuals. So theres lots of different avenues to reach out to us. We have our own clinicians in-house, so we have therapists, highly qualified therapists who know the space. Our scientific co-founder is one of the foremost thought leaders in the space as well, so its built very specifically for folks who are who are dealing with this in their lives. So either through our website or even having your doctor call us or drop us a note, have them drop me a note, Im happy to talk to them directly, right? Its Deepak@OxfordVR.org, and we can get a get a headset out to you.

Rachel Star Withers: Well, thank you so much for joining us, Deepak. Its wonderful speaking with you.

Gabe Howard: Great interview, Rachel, now you talked a lot about therapy, but what did you gain as far as in therapy, in the schizophrenia space from that interview?

Rachel Star Withers: I was absolutely enamored when he talked about the use of Rey and VR for delusions and thats something that I know many of us with schizophrenia struggle with. And its something thats very hard to deal with. You know, outside of medication, it is. Its hard to find like any sort of therapy to help you with the delusion other than like writing about it. You know, its like, OK. I want to try that out. When he mentioned that right away, I want to be like, sign me up. I would love a new type of therapy to try something to help me with, like delusional thoughts. Another area would be the paranoia. Many of us who have the, outdated, terms for schizophrenia, but I originally was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. I dont even know how they would begin to acknowledge, you know, my personal symptom with the paranoia, but I would love to find out.

Gabe Howard: One of the things that I think is important to reiterate is this is virtual reality therapy. Its not something that you just grab on your own and you do without guidance. So people with schizophrenia that are doing this are doing it in conjunction with a therapist, medical personnel. Theyre not just downloading weird apps and declaring that theyre going through therapy because theyve taken a virtual reality program. Thats something that I took away from this interview. Just its just another therapy just happens to use virtual reality. But a question that came up that I wanted to ask you, Rachel, is if somebody with schizophrenia is having trouble distinguishing from reality or delusions or hallucinations, is virtual reality OK for them? Because I know that you struggle with different types of hallucinations and delusions, and you have spoken very highly of virtual reality. But wasnt that difficult for you? What was your experience with virtual reality?

Rachel Star Withers: Whats fascinating to me is that so many times people have brought this up to me in the past and I really couldnt answer because I had never tried it myself, but people would be like, Oh well, do you even think youd be able to tell the difference? Or what if you got stuck in the virtual reality? Because I have gotten kind of stuck for periods of times in a psychotic episode. You know, and in my mind, I was kind of like, that probably wouldnt happen, but I never tried it for myself. Now that I have, and I was incredibly impressed with where tech is nowadays. No. No, I dont think anyone with schizophrenia is going to get stuck in the virtual reality, no more than I would get stuck playing, you know, my super NES Mario Game. Um, you know, growing up when I would play video games, I would never turn off the Nintendo and think, OK, Im Mario, lets go plumb. You know? I mean, that just wasnt a thing. It was the exact same way. When I took the headset off, its over. I feel personally that people with schizophrenia really would not have a problem telling the difference between virtual reality and the world around them. Our issue is that the world around us is what gets confusing. I liken it to watching a movie that Im really, really into. Once the movie is over, though, I dont still think Im in the movie. I dont still think Im watching it. I understand that its over. Now, of course, these are my experiences. Yes, if Im in the middle of a psychotic episode where I keep thinking that my arm is crawling away from me and my mom is trying to get me to stay in the bed because Im not making sense, no one should put a VR headset on me. So, yeah, I do think there needs to be a line. But at the same time, if Im in that state, you probably shouldnt turn on The Exorcist and put it in front of me playing on the TV.

Gabe Howard: Theres safety concerns with everything,

Rachel Star Withers: Yes, yes.

Gabe Howard: Whether its VR therapy, whether its cognitive behavioral therapy, whether its group therapy. That makes perfect sense. People with any sort of illness are not always capable of doing the things when theyre symptomatic that theyre not able to do. You know, if I have the flu and I have 103 degree temperature, you probably shouldnt put a virtual reality headset on me, either.

Rachel Star Withers: Something that you should also take into account for my people with schizophrenia out there. It probably isnt the best idea to run out and like buy a headset and try and do all this on your own. You do need a therapist kind of helping you, to debrief you. The other thing is that even just playing certain games could trigger some troubling thoughts. If youre prone to suicidal ideation and tendencies, it very well could trigger some of those in you. So I do stress that if you have schizophrenia, be careful. Dont try and just go out and buy a headset and download a bunch of content that, yeah, it could cause some problems. And I say all this, Gabe, because what do you think one of the first games I downloaded was when I bought the headset?

Gabe Howard: Oh, Rachel.

Rachel Star Withers: It was a horror game, and of course, I like scrolled

Gabe Howard: [Sigh]

Rachel Star Withers: Through and I was like, you know, Im like reading the ratings. Theyre like made for teens, teen. Im like, Whatever, Im an adult. Oh, this ones very mature. Let me buy it. That was some money down the drain. I jumped so hard that the headset flew off and landed on the floor and I was like, I cant play that again. That was a little too intense for me. The graphic, even though I knew it was fake, it was a little too much because and I want to say this, I do think its important for people out there who are running out to try a VR headset, you cant look away. And thats what struck me and actually made the game very unnerving for me was that it wasnt like watching a scary movie. You know, where I can look to the side is because Im wearing the headset, there is no looking away. And I do think that is something very important to stress to people out there who do have problems with visual hallucinations like I do. They love to just kind of be like right around the corner. So the game? Yeah, it played on that a little. So I do want to let people know that it can be a little jarring. Please be careful what you download. Yeah, and, dont do what Rachel did.

Gabe Howard: Rachel, I always knew that you would become a cautionary tale. Dont try this at home.

Rachel Star Withers: And now, a word from our sponsors.

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Rachel Star Withers: And were back talking about virtual reality in the treatment of schizophrenia.

Gabe Howard: Our next guest is super cool and, full disclosure, we met them when they contacted Inside Schizophrenia because they had questions about schizophrenia, and Rachels voice actually appears in the virtual reality experience. Now its narrated by Tilda Swinton, who is several levels above Rachel Star Withers. But you still shared space with Ms. Swinton, so I think that is super cool. Rachel, can you tell us about our next guest?

Rachel Star Withers: So actually, they were in contact with me over a year ago, and they found us through the podcast, Inside Schizophrenia. And the director, writer, producers listened to the podcast to kind of help them understand schizophrenia. Actually there is a clip inside of the movie. I dont really know what I am. Maybe a brain stem? If you are playing the movie, my voice does pop up a little bit, just a small snippet. And at the time, I had no clue how big this was going to get. You know, Gabe, youre very popular, and I know so many people message us asking, Hey, Im writing a movie, Im writing a book, I want to understand schizophrenia, bipolar. People from all walks of life, students. So when they reached out to me, I honestly, I mean, I didnt know its was just like a student film? What it was? But I treat everyone the same. So its been very exciting for me to see this turned into something big because most of the time I never even hear back from the people who ask for my help. This has been really incredible, and they were very respectful when they talked to me, the questions that they asked. I was just very impressed. And to see what the movie actually was, that it didnt exploit people with schizophrenia has been just absolutely wonderful.

Gabe Howard: Well, Rachel, you sat down with the creators and had a very cool conversation, lets go ahead and play that interview and see what they discussed.

Rachel Star Withers: Excited right now to be speaking with Barry Gene Murphy and May Abdalla, who are the directors and producers of Goliath: Playing with Reality. Thank you both so much for being here.

Barry Gene Murphy: Thanks for having us.

Rachel Star Withers: Before we even get into the movie / game / virtual reality experience, you guys just won something really big. Tell us about that.

May Abdalla: We won the Grand Jury Prize for VR at the Venice International Film Festival last week.

Rachel Star Withers: I was stalking the Instagrams, and I think I saw a picture there of maybe was it you with Penelope Cruz?

Barry Gene Murphy: Thats in the press room, that was kind of crazy. She just walked in and sat down next to me. Yeah.

Rachel Star Withers: Im actually like a huge fan of hers, so like a minute like that little picture popped up, I was like, Oh wow, no, this is legit.

Barry Gene Murphy: It was great.

May Abdalla: Yeah, it was. It was mad, it was like the proper paparazzi red carpet experience.

Barry Gene Murphy: Yeah.

Rachel Star Withers: Well, that is incredible, and that was pretty much Goliaths, thats its first big showing? Or second or third?

May Abdalla: No, that was the premiere, the premiere was at Venice, and now its live on the Oculus Store. It will continue to tour, but that was the beginning of its journey.

Rachel Star Withers: Well, first, tell us what exactly is Goliath?

May Abdalla: So Goliath is a 25 minute virtual reality experience that tells the story of a man called John, who is Goliath, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, spends seven years in an institution and when he comes out, is pretty isolated, but then discovers the world of online gaming. So its an exploration both of kind of his story of this management of this unreal world of psychosis and the kind of non-reality of games, but also it uses VR to explore kind of how we create our perceptions of reality and like, how do we piece our stories together?

Rachel Star Withers: Why this story? Why did you decide that we want to bring Johns story to life?

Barry Gene Murphy: Like John is a friends brother, and I heard this story from him like about 10 years ago when he was fresh out of hospital and my friend didnt recognize his brother and his slurred speech, his gait, his just his countenance was just it was such a change in the way, even though hed been visiting like, you know, out in the real world, is like a fish out of water. And what happened was when he noticed he was playing online games, he was his old self again. He was in the world and he was witty. He was like the old, the old John. That story kind of like just caught on to me, and I just I thought I wanted to make like an animated documentary about it because VR hadnt really been out in the world. And then me and May worked together on a couple of VR projects. And I kind of convinced May that this would be a good idea, the story, because it just kept coming back. And then the more we kind of wrote the idea out and planned it and thought about it, the more active for VR it became, you know, it started to write itself.

May Abdalla: And I think for me, the question was like, Well, you know, you dont really want to use VR for a story where it felt like really critical, really meaningful. And many people know somebody whos experienced something like psychosis. And I think the idea of trying to tell that story, kind of an ordinary story, meant to give it the justice of the form or just really trying to get inside of something which, you know, when its in cinema, its like super dramatized and really extreme. And then people actually who are experiencing it kind of get ignored and have to kind of get through really difficult experiences kind of alone. And we started.

Barry Gene Murphy: The more we dug into it, the more we realized that actually in the media, the representation of conditions like this is really terrible, you know what I mean? And people have quite a bad in-built bias to it. And we wanted to tell an everyday story we wanted to like, just put people in. This is how it is with this person, and its largely positive. You know what I mean? Were not trying to make you pity anybody. Were not trying to victimize the person. Were just trying to show how they live, whats good for them. How gaming is good for them. And, you know, and then also ask you like, how sure are you of your reality?

Rachel Star Withers: One of the things I love about, and Im going to say experience, because like, movie and game dont really justify it, so well go with experience, is that it has nothing to do with horror. I think most of the time, if you were to hear, Hey, do you want to play a game about a schizophrenic person in a psych ward? Youre expecting it to be a horror or a horror type game. Im expecting like mental patients like coming out of the walls and, you know?

Barry Gene Murphy: OK. Yeah. Bedlam.

Rachel Star Withers: Yeah, and if you watch or experience Goliath, it avoids all of that stuff. And I loved that being someone with schizophrenia. I just got to ask though, like, were you tempted to kind of add some horror to it? Or like, how did that go?

Barry Gene Murphy: Actually, at the beginning, we were never tempted to because its so uncomfortable anyway, that like to make someone uncomfortable in that space is just a step too far. Were not ready for it in a way. Its like we even have Tilda in the intro as Echo saying, its a cheap trick. Because we do a split second of horror and then we go, but thats just a cheap trick, you know? So we were definitely not in any way interested in scaring people. If anything, we wanted them to feel the sublime like horror. But like, you know, from an eternal perspective, you know, like because the fear of your mental illness is forever, you know what I mean? That there is a kind of terminal kind of fear. We were kind of more interested in portraying that kind of idea, but not scaring people out of their wits.

May Abdalla: I also think that when people are scared and Im often scared in VR because Im such a scaredy cat. At some point when we were testing playing back your voice and I had recorded my own voice saying my own name to me and putting it in the mix. And actually, I jumped out of my skin when I heard it again because I was so easily scared, I thought somebody was in the room talking to me. I think the problem with introducing fear into something like this is we really wanted people to feel like they could listen and engage and think and kind of enter the kind of compassionate space. And when youre scared, you really cant listen.

Rachel Star Withers: And just for our listeners out there, when I was doing the experience, I have to say, I was at no point ever scared or fearful of anything, really. The word that comes to me was wonder. I was very impressed with how you guys presented the experience, and it was almost just like, Wow, there is so much going on here because you pretty much take us inside of a persons brain, you know, the best we can. And I really, though, that was the word that came to me was, Wow, this is incredible. This is like just wonder all around me.

May Abdalla: Thats, thank you, thats amazing.

Barry Gene Murphy: Yeah.

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Podcast: Virtual Reality for the Treatment of Schizophrenia - PsychCentral.com