Psychiatry Professor Peter Yellowlees has helped his students better understand the experience of hallucinations of schizophrenics by creating his own practice in a virtual world.

Residents in this “metaverse” or metaphysical universe-a three dimensional world created by a Californian firm called Second Life can meet, discuss, mediate and experience other things that other residents have created.

Yellowlees, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, leases his own island from the online virtual world creators.

There, he has built a clinic, where his students can visit and attend his lectures inside Second Life and then experience hallucinations that he created, to help them understand the effects of schizophrenia.

It was by using Second Life software, that Yellowlees could create hallucinations of what schizophrenics go through, helping others and his students better understand what their patients experienced.

“It’s so powerful that some get quite upset,” Yellowlees told the Economist.

The Economist reported that when Mr Yellowlees invited, as part of a trial, Second Life’s public into the ward, 73% of the visitors said afterwards that it “improved [their] understanding of schizophrenia.”

Admittedly, many of the 747, 263 users participate in Second Life “just for fun”, jumping from cloud to cloud or wandering through castles being some of the features residents can experience.

However this virtual world is not a just a pretty façade of exotic imagery as support groups for cancer survivors meet and converse online, politicians meet and discuss issues with reporters, making Second Life an “enhanced communications medium”.