Evolution of the Virtual Human: From term to potential application in psychiatry

Virtual reality applications in mental health have traditionally involved t he creation of virtual environments that acted as provocative agents either for the purposes of the identification of disorders or their treatment. Th ere is infrequent mention of the utilization of "virtual humans" despite th e obvious significance of humans within our lives. More broadly, the term V irtual 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 appli cation of 3D animated figures that exist in virtual realities. These applic ations refer to quite different phenomena in very different contexts leadin g to a high level of ambiguity and uncertainty when referring to virtual hu mans. In the following, the various applications of the term virtual human will be reviewed and critiqued through its most frequent applications, in v arious fields. They will be reviewed in an ascending manner from the least human of application to the most. Finally, a definition will be offered ref lecting 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.