ArticleSocial psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology2025
Immersive virtual reality as a novel approach to investigate the association between adverse events and adolescent paranoid ideation.
Article in Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- A prospective study of VR-assessed state paranoia and anxiety suggests threat-related developmental pathways in adolescence.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- Better Safe Than Sorry? Exploratory Associations Between Fear-Learning Processes and Later Paranoia in Threat-Exposed Adolescents in Standardized Virtual Reality Environments.Schizophrenia bulletin open · 2026Article
- Exploring the association between adolescent psychotic-like experiences and components of social performance using a multi-level virtual reality paradigm.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2025Article
- Virtual Humans in Virtual Reality Mental Health Research: Systematic Review.JMIR XR and spatial computing · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeParanoid ideation is common among adolescents, yet little is known about the precursors. Using a novel immersive virtual reality (VR) paradigm, we tested whether experiences of bullying, and other interpersonal/threatening events, are associated with paranoid ideation to a greater degree than other types of (i) non-interpersonal events or (ii) adverse childhood experiences.
methodsSelf-reported exposure to adverse life events and bullying was collected on 481 adolescents, aged 11-15. We used mixed effects (multilevel) linear regression to estimate the magnitude of associations between risk factors and paranoid ideation, assessed by means of adolescents' reactions to ambiguously behaving avatars in a VR school canteen, adjusting for putative confounders (gender, year group, ethnicity, free school meal status, place of birth, family mental health problems).
resultsLifetime exposure to interpersonal/threatening events, but not non-interpersonal events or adverse circumstances, was associated with higher levels of state paranoid ideation, with further evidence that the effect was cumulative (1 type: ϐ
conclusionsOur data suggest a degree of specificity for adversities involving interpersonal threat or hostility, i.e. those that involve unwanted interference and/or attempted control of an individual's personal boundaries being associated with heightened levels of state paranoid ideation among adolescents.
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