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The world's first scientific paper offering a careful evaluation of the synergistic use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy (PAP) was published by psychedelic researcher Agnieszka D. Sekula and medical doctor Dr. Prashanth Puspanathan, the co-founders of Enosis Therapeutics Pty Ltd, a research & development company focused on psychedelic experience design, and a Swinburne University professor, Luke Downey.
Appearing in the globally recognized and peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Psychology, the paper titled, "Virtual Reality as a Moderator for Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy," responds to the recent surge of interest in leveraging VR as an adjunct to psychedelic therapy that is driven mostly by commercial players from the VR space.
The paper synthesizes the highest quality scientific evidence on both PAP and VR therapy and examines potential advantages of this model against any limitations, side effects or adverse events that may occur.
Authors provide clear recommendations on how clinicians and research organizations can best utilize VR integrated into a robust PAP protocol and outline contextual VR design specifications that may benefit the treatment the most, whilst encouraging further empirical exploration of this unique combination.
The research demonstrates that VR is an ideal candidate to be used for this exploration, simultaneously allowing a further glimpse into psychological and neurological mechanisms that are at play during an altered state.
