SURVIVE
A VR tool to help patients with stimulant
use disorder stay in recovery
Stimulant Use Recovery via Immersive Virtual Environments (SURVIVE)
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the only established way to treat stimulant use disorder (StUD), which involves the misuse of drugs like methamphetamine, cocaine, and other amphetamines. SURVIVE helps prevent a significant problem with the technique: frequent relapses. Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), SURVIVE intends to create and evaluate a virtual reality (VR) simulation embedded with common StUD triggers and CBT techniques for managing cravings.
“The VR-based CBT system, used in a clinical setting, will deliver one scenario to users with four levels of difficulty. The levels of difficulty for the scenario include various triggers for relapse—like seeing money on the table, which can spark an impulse in some patients to call a potential dealer.”
Dr. Bethany Bracken
Principal Scientist and Principal Investigator on SURVIVE
Clinician dashboards for personalized treatment
The Charles River team is partnering with Dr. Lisham Ashrafioun at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Dr. Ashrafioun will conduct usability testing for the tool in a clinical setting. As part of this patient-centered testing, the clinic will recruit 15 adult participants diagnosed with StUD who will play through all four levels of difficulty in random order. As alternatives to the stimulant use, users can perform therapeutic activities like painting, making a meal, or even cleaning a room.
To support more effective treatment planning, the SURVIVE system will include a dedicated clinician interface designed to help providers monitor patient progress, manage risk, and personalize care. This digital dashboard will synthesize patient self-reports and headset-derived metrics to offer a clearer picture of how individuals respond to the virtual treatment scenarios.
Clinicians are looking for access to data they can garner from the headsets. A useful data point might be about the kinds of coping mechanisms—meditation exercises, positive affirmations—users might prefer so clinicians can tailor their treatments accordingly. Clinicians can use data from SURVIVE to personalize treatment plans and increase engagement among their patients. The next phase of development will include a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of SURVIVE at helping people cope with StUD and also create real user interfaces for clinicians to use.
Addressing drug dependence across multiple use cases
SURVIVE is especially effective because it brings imagined scenarios to life, creating a greater impact on the patient. For individuals who struggle to picture situations and react to them, SURVIVE makes these scenarios more salient and easier to engage with. The system is also much safer, allowing difficult scenarios to be practiced without potentially harmful real-world exposure. Conducting simulations in a safe and controlled environment further helps reduce stigma and improve treatment outcomes.
Equally important, the principles that drive SURVIVE can apply to a wide range of use cases that address drug dependence across multiple substances of abuse and also be extended to other mental health issues (e.g., fear of heights).
SURVIVE is part of the TheraVerse® group of tools that uses VR to address addiction. Among the products under this umbrella is CESSATION, a narrative VR tool that helps users quit smoking (available for download through the Meta Quest Store), and NO VAPE, which uses VR technology and CBT techniques to encourage users to quit vaping.
SURVIVE will only be available in a clinical setting so that patients are only using it with clinician supervision. The goal is to also allow patients and clinicians to meet in a shared virtual space so users might be able to dial in remotely through telehealth appointments.
This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Grant No. 1R43DA059490-01. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, or Department of Health and Human Services.