Meet the researcher: Chris Brewin

I am Professor of Clinical Psychology and a practising cognitive-behaviour therapist with particular interest in depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Both, depression and posttraumatic stress disporder, are characterised by high levels of self-criticism and there is a lot of recent interest in compassion-focussed therapy designed to reduce self-criticism by helping people to be more compassionate with themselves. Recently I have collaborated with Professor Mel Slater in the UCL Computer Science department to develop a virtual reality intervention to increase self-compassion, using a technique called ‘embodiment’. This involves having the person act compassionately towards a distressed virtual child and then be embodied within the child to experience receiving their own compassionate words and gestures.

On the PlosOne website the article is accompanied by pictures and a short video demonstrating the process.

• "Embodying Compassion: A Virtual Reality Paradigm for Overcoming Excessive Self-Criticism" on the PlosOne website