Virtual Psychology is a global community of scientist-practitioners with an interest in the reciprocal relations between psychology and technology. We have strong community bases in North and South America (USA, Argentina, Bolivia), South-Eastern Europe (Italy, Slovenia, Czechia), Northern Europe (Finland), Middle-East (Israel, Iran, Qatar), and Asia (India, Pakistan, China).
Our motivation is to offer innovative tools to mental health clinicians and researchers that enable them to make better and more accurate diagnostic assessments. Why? Because we believe new technology can serve the advancement of mental health. More than that, we are intrigued by the idea of exploring the mind as a computational system, and we perceive computation (hardware, software, and networking) as a reflection (projection) of our human brain’s wetware, cognitions, emotions, and interpersonal connectivity.
So we set our development team to work in order to provide advanced programs that would create a synergy between computer science and clinical psychology. Specifically, creating internet-based computational implementations of mental health diagnostic assessment standards, the Rorschach test, and the DSM-5.
Virtual Psychology started by providing the RAP, a widely used program for coding and interpretation of the Rorschach inkblots test. Today, the RAP is one of the most popular programs used with the Rorschach test worldwide in various clinical settings: hospitals, clinics, private practices, and universities. During the coronavirus pandemic, we published the COVID-19 Rorschach test dataset. The dataset includes about half a million worldwide coded responses to the inkblots and is intended to enable research for pre-post-pandemic patterns.
Recently, with the RAP+, we extended the program’s interpretation capability. In addition, we presented our new mental health diagnostic program, the DxP. A diagnostic program that derives from the North American psychiatric model of establishing a diagnosis on the base of well-defined criteria. The DxP bridges the gap between advanced computation and traditional clinical work. We are effectively enabling mental health practitioners to be more knowledgeable and precise when applying the DSM-5.
