Depressed Virtual Agents: Development of a Playful VR Application for the Training of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Students

The use of simulation patient programs in the education of child and adolescent psychiatrists is limited by their low availability, high cost, and questionable authenticity and accuracy. To address this issue, we are developing a playful VR interaction with an autonomous agent, a virtual young patient with depression, providing a standardized and safe tool for medical students to practice their diagnosis skills. We follow a participatory design process and directly involve the target group in the development to ensure that the tool meets their needs. We focused on two aspects: the virtual agent's emotionality and the user-agent interaction. The user study results show actual application and agent design requirements. Further, we present the challenges of the first prototypical implementations of young agents and outline future research visions.