Skip to main content

REVIEW article

Front. Psychiatry

Sec. Neurostimulation

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1432314

This article is part of the Research Topic Advancing Education in Neurostimulation: Nurturing Competent and Collaborative Clinicians and Researchers View all 5 articles

Advancing Education in Interventional Psychiatry: Scoping Review of Simulation Training and the Future of Virtual Reality-Based Learning

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Department of Psychiatry, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 2 Harquail Centre for Neuromodulation, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 3 Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 4 Department of Anesthesia, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 5 Perioperative Brain Health Centre, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 6 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objectives: Interventional psychiatric procedures such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) have become increasingly important therapeutic options for managing severe or treatment-resistant mental illnesses. However, research suggests that gaps in training students in these techniques represent a rate-limiting step for their further dissemination and accessibility for the public. Studies have shown that the majority of psychiatry residents lack necessary competency and self-confidence in performing these treatments. Simulation based training has served as a gold standard for training procedural skills in medicine. Simulationbased training environments, particularly immersive reality technology (e.g., virtual reality [VR]), represent a promising novel avenue for trainees to develop the necessary skills for delivering these treatments. This scoping review discusses the current training in interventional psychiatry and how simulation-based training, specifically VR, can improve pedagogy in this area. Methods: In this scoping review, a literature search was conducted on the PubMed database using specific search terms such as "simulat*", "training", "ECT", "TMS", "neuromodulation", and "interventional psychiatry". The search was limited to studies with language in English from 1980 to 2023. Results: The initial search yielded 2094 articles, of which 4 evaluated the effectiveness of simulation approaches for ECT and were included in this review. No published studies were identified regarding VR-based education in ECT or rTMS. Conclusions: This scoping review provides an overview of the current landscape of pedagogical methods in interventional psychiatry and highlights the identified gaps in both the existing literature and the potential application of simulation-based environments, including VR, within this field. Considering the ongoing shift in medical education towards competency-based training, this review discusses the needs and benefits of VR-based simulators as an avenue to enhance competency in interventional psychiatry. Leveraging existing experience in the use of VR-based simulators in procedural skill acquisition in surgery and anesthesia, as well as recommendations on how to translate this approach to clinical training in psychiatry, are also discussed.

    Keywords: Simulation-based learning, virtual reality, Interventional psychiatry, Neuromodulation, ECT, rTMS

    Received: 13 May 2024; Accepted: 18 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Giacobbe, Tu, Kaustov, Choi, Wiegelmann and Alam. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Peter Giacobbe, Department of Psychiatry, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

    Research integrity at Frontiers

    Man ultramarathon runner in the mountains he trains at sunset

    95% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good

    Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.


    Find out more