Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu's mental health research projects at the Cruïlla Festival

Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu will be at the Cruïlla Festival 2025 with the Somrise project, which supports research projects delivering new solutions to mental disorders. Sant Joan de Déu researchers will make the most of this huge event to explain how virtual reality and new technologies are opening up a new paradigm in the treatment of mental health disorders.

Festival attendees will be able to learn how AVATAR-VR therapy improves the symptoms of people with schizophrenia who do not respond to conventional treatments. AVATAR-VR therapy allows people with schizophrenia to interact directly with a digital avatar based on the characteristics the patient describes of the voices they hear in their head. At all times, a therapist guides the patient in confrontational dialogues with inner voices that are usually authoritarian, threatening and abusive. The ultimate goal is to achieve changes in the negative perceptions that people with schizophrenia have of themselves and their relationships with others.

Virtual reality is also the driving force behind the Virtual Scape innovation project which recreates immersive experiences in relaxing environments, such as natural landscapes, with the aim of improving emotional wellbeing in these freedom-deprived settings. The first results of this study have succeeded in reducing stress and anxiety levels in penitentiary and juvenile justice facilities in Catalonia.

The relationship with initiatives such as the Cruïlla Festival makes it possible to share research with society, which in turn helps in the battle against the stigma that is still attached to certain mental disorders.