Evolution of the Virtual Human: From Term to Potential Application in Psychiatry

Abstract

Virtual reality applications in mental health have traditionally involved the creation of virtual environments that acted as provocative agents either for the purposes of the identification of disorders or their treatment. There is infrequent mention of the utilization of "virtual humans" despite the obvious significance of humans within our lives. More broadly, the term Virtual Human is frequently used in a number of contexts extending from its use as a term, modifying anything that needs to be modernized, to the application of 3D animated figures that exist in virtual realities. These applications refer to quite different phenomena in very different contexts leading to a high level of ambiguity and uncertainty when referring to virtual humans. In the following, the various applications of the term virtual human will be reviewed and critiqued through its most frequent applications, in various fields. They will be reviewed in an ascending manner from the least human of application to the most. Finally, a definition will be offered reflecting the potential complexity of the term as it reflects the expression of our most human factors, and how these are needed in the development of a model of a virtual human in psychiatry.