{"title":"Exploration of a virtual reality exercise to help train police with responding to mental health crises in the community.","authors":"Lisa M Dario, Jesse D Saginor","doi":"10.1002/cbm.2361","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>A substantial number of police-citizen interactions involve a civilian presenting in a mental health crisis, often with law enforcement as the first point of contact. Traditional training methods offer minimal opportunity for police to practice navigating such civilian interactions or to develop and strengthen relevant skills. Virtual reality (VR) offers a promising avenue for addressing this gap by immersing police officers in realistic, controlled environments that could help them to acclimatise to these encounters and understand their own reactions to them.</p><p><strong>Aims: </strong>To examine the extent to which law enforcement officers become immersed in a virtual training environment (VTE), to assess their empathy and sympathy towards a non-player character (NPC) presenting with schizophrenic psychosis and how empathy and sympathy relate to virtual immersion.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Forty police officers-about a fifth of the department approached-participated in a VR mental health training scenario. Officers' immersion in the VTE was assessed using a 28-item Presence Questionnaire and their empathy and sympathy were measured using adapted standard scales. The study employed Fisher's Exact Test and Spearman's correlation to analyse the relationships between immersion, empathy and sympathy.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Most officers experienced good levels of immersion, although nearly half felt confused or disoriented at the beginning of the session. Officers reported moderate levels of sympathy and higher empathy towards a non-player character. Significant correlations were found between specific aspects of immersion (e.g. sensory engagement) and empathy. Fisher's Exact Test revealed strong associations between physical interactions in the VTE and empathy/sympathy.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our findings show that police are willing and able to engage in a VR exercise to learn about their response to people in a mental health crisis and that, in such circumstances, they can be both sympathetic and empathic. Next steps will be exploration of the value of such a tool to enhance real-life responding.</p>","PeriodicalId":47362,"journal":{"name":"Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1002/cbm.2361","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: A substantial number of police-citizen interactions involve a civilian presenting in a mental health crisis, often with law enforcement as the first point of contact. Traditional training methods offer minimal opportunity for police to practice navigating such civilian interactions or to develop and strengthen relevant skills. Virtual reality (VR) offers a promising avenue for addressing this gap by immersing police officers in realistic, controlled environments that could help them to acclimatise to these encounters and understand their own reactions to them.
Aims: To examine the extent to which law enforcement officers become immersed in a virtual training environment (VTE), to assess their empathy and sympathy towards a non-player character (NPC) presenting with schizophrenic psychosis and how empathy and sympathy relate to virtual immersion.
Methods: Forty police officers-about a fifth of the department approached-participated in a VR mental health training scenario. Officers' immersion in the VTE was assessed using a 28-item Presence Questionnaire and their empathy and sympathy were measured using adapted standard scales. The study employed Fisher's Exact Test and Spearman's correlation to analyse the relationships between immersion, empathy and sympathy.
Results: Most officers experienced good levels of immersion, although nearly half felt confused or disoriented at the beginning of the session. Officers reported moderate levels of sympathy and higher empathy towards a non-player character. Significant correlations were found between specific aspects of immersion (e.g. sensory engagement) and empathy. Fisher's Exact Test revealed strong associations between physical interactions in the VTE and empathy/sympathy.
Conclusions: Our findings show that police are willing and able to engage in a VR exercise to learn about their response to people in a mental health crisis and that, in such circumstances, they can be both sympathetic and empathic. Next steps will be exploration of the value of such a tool to enhance real-life responding.
期刊介绍：
Criminal Behaviour & Mental Health – CBMH – aims to publish original material on any aspect of the relationship between mental state and criminal behaviour. Thus, we are interested in mental mechanisms associated with offending, regardless of whether the individual concerned has a mental disorder or not. We are interested in factors that influence such relationships, and particularly welcome studies about pathways into and out of crime. These will include studies of normal and abnormal development, of mental disorder and how that may lead to offending for a subgroup of sufferers, together with information about factors which mediate such a relationship.
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