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Real Pain Dulled In Virtual Worlds
26199 writes "The BBC is reporting on a novel use of Virtual Reality: as a distraction for burn victims who suffer excruciating pain during daily dressing changes. What's most interesting is that it actually works. Another use of VR discussed is in the treatment of patients suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; memories can be relived until they are accepted."
iirc, dentists used to do something similar. patients would wear headphones while procedures were being done. i think they would play some sort of white noise.
j
This is, of course, assuming that it actually WORKS. =)
-Vendal Thornheart
Exposure therapy is not pleasant, but it does tend to work. I don't know much about PTSD, but for anxiety disorders and phobias exposure is quite effective and virtual reality techniques have been becoming more and more popular for this. For treating someone with public speaking anxiety it's easier to get a virtual audience than to arrange for a bunch of people in a room...
It's not like patients take their VR machines home with them and dope up when their doctor isn't looking :-P
In all seriousness though, it's not like the simulation is of Cindy Crawford consoling you about your amazingly traumatic experience. It's an ACTUAL SIMULATION of your amazingly traumatic experience. How likely is it that people would turn away from normal life for the comfort of that?
"It's called morphine."
Wow - that's quite a medical breakthrough you have made. I'm sure the global medical community would like to hear more about this as it seems this idea never occured to them to use painkillers before.
Okay, enough with the sarcasm. If you had paid closer attention while reading the article you would recall this:
"Dr Hunter Hoffman, research fellow at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, has tested his virtual worlds on victims of burns injuries who suffer excruciating pain during their daily dressing changes which conventional drug therapy fails to control."
That's gotta be a lot of pain.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Here
even the screencaps look the same as in the story I remember, and they appear to have the look of 10 year old renderings.
FisterBelvedere -- Putting a whole new meaning to "streaks on the china" since 1996.
I really think I am going to regret bringing this up on Slashdot, as it is inevitably going to be misinterpreted.
But... victims of sexual abuse sometimes sometimes end up having sexual fantasies about that abuse.
I recommend the following three articles by Betty Dodson as she, I think, understands the issue well. WARNING EXPLICIT CONTENT for those who care.
It just happened I wrote yesterday about the usages of VR to treat fears. A company named Virtually Better, based in Georgia, creates virtual environments mixing video images and computer-generated ones to help people deal with their fears and anxieties. In this article, the New York Times (free registration) writes this costs only 10 percent more than conventional therapy. The newspaper adds that therapists using this system claim a success rate exceeding 90 percent. Virtually Better "has created scenes of a glass elevator and a bridge to address fear of height, an airplane cabin for those who fear flying and a thunderstorm to diminish fear of bad weather." Other environments address the treatment of substance addiction or of post-traumatic stress. A (Virtual) Therapist's Dream contains selected excerpts. It also includes images on the virtual airplane environment.
Is not usually life-threatening (you'll certainly wish you were dead while you're going through it, but you don't usually die).
Much more dangerous are the withdrawl syndromes associated with Alcohol and Benzos (diazepam, lorazepam, alprazolam... aka Valium, Ativan, and Xanax, respectively). Those folks have a much harder go of it than heroin and painkiller addicts, at least physiologically speaking... they get autonomic hyperactivity, refractory seizures, hallucinations... there's a very significant mortality if not medically treated.
Stimulants tend not to have such a severe withdrawl syndrome, at least in a life-threatening sense. I'm referring to cocaine, methamphetamine... there's a crash when you come down, and they can deplete your body's stores of catecholamines and other neurotransmitters, leading to periods of agitation, depression, insomnia, etc, but that's typically after longer term use.
A psychological addiction to VR should be a very minor issue compared to any of the above.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Creating more VR worlds for those that aren't helped by the action games would be a logicla next step.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is often one of the more difficult psychological disorders to treat,
Difficult for whom to treat in what way?
PTSD is one of the easiest to treat in my experience (7 years as a clinical hypnotherapist). You know exactly what the problem is (recurring memories), and you know what the therapeutic outcome is (ability to remember whilst remaning calm). Where's the difficulty?
and is pretty much tops in the category of anxiety-related disorders.
tops??? Who modded this up?
It would be a wonderful thing if it actually is useful in treatment.
The drug companies have a near stranglehold over psychiatry. Without big money to fund the trials and marketing, it will never reach mass-usage.