For 27 years, Vibeke Andersen heard voices telling her she was worthless.
The 53-year-old was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and heard voices for 27 years, which had her repeatedly going in and out of psychiatric hospitals. The voices controlled what she said and did, and sometimes told her that even her family could not love her.
“They told me that I was not worth living as a human being. Nobody cared about me,” Andersen told Euronews Health.
Then, in 2020, she was offered an experimental treatment that asked her to do something that might seem counterintuitive. Instead of trying to distance herself from the voice, she would confront a virtual version of it face-to-face.
Confronting symptoms inside virtual reality
