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Military Uses Virtual Iraq To Treat PTSD
Hugh Pickens writes "Traditionally the best treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] — being raped, narrowly escaping the collapse of the Twin Towers, or witnessing a buddy die on the battlefield — is to have the person relive the trauma using his or her imagination. Repeated exposure to the horror can desensitize individuals and help them stay calm enough to reprocess what happened and get beyond it. Now Clinical Psychologist Albert "Skip" Rizzo has developed a program that has had great success in treating returning troops from Iraq. A soldier with PTSD recounts what happened, and a therapist seated before a computer then creates an environment in the program Virtual Iraq that captures the essential elements of the episode. By donning special goggles, the soldier can see a reenactment and while the simulation starts off relatively tame over the course of several weeks, the therapist monitors the patient 's response and more elements of the episode are introduced until the individual can finally go through an intensely vivid recreation of it without being overpowered by terror. Other programs offered to treat PTSD include Virtual Airplane, Virtual Audiences, Virtual Heights, Virtual Storm, and Virtual Vietnam."
* Watching Uwe Boll films.
* Being a chair in Ballmer's office.
* Working as a new Microsoft guru and telling the angry masses with a straight face that Vista is great! No, really, it is!
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I don't see this being particularly helpful if the cause was rape or watching a friend die though. I'd imagine you'd just feel worse.
Scientology techniques combined with computers!
More seriously though, this is an effective technique, but it is painful for the person going through it. There are much better techniques found in fringe places like NLP that provide ways for people to get through severe problems like that without forcing them to relive trauma such as a rape over and over again. This technique seems almost sadistic.
I'm waiting for Virtual Staff Meeting.
*shudder*
Although I suppose the fact that I can joke about it means I'm coming along. *twitch* *twitch*
--MarkusQ
Repeated exposure to the horror can desensitize individuals...
That must explain American television. How can anybody in their right mind watch that sh*t?
Just go visit a 3rd-world country and meditate to yourself, I'm just visitting, and being payed to visit.
...do they have Virtual Girls?
Yeah, I don't think "Virtual Rape" and "Virtual 9/11" will go over to well.
ceci n'est pas une
Yet another way for the veterans affairs office to waste taxpayers dollars.
http://fnonsl.fantasy-net.net/category/vet-center
^^^__Did you know the VA hospital owns property in second life? They're going to build virtual ski slopes for the legless vets to ski down. Woohoo!
Kind of reminds me of the carlin skit "Dollys for froggys"
Doesn't any of the 100 million war themed FPS work?
Virtual Vietnam
I think I played that game years ago. It was severely unbalanced in the beginning with the attack helicopters that couldn't be shot down and the M60 infantry being deadly accurate on the move.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Other programs offered to treat PTSD include Virtual Airplane, Virtual Audiences, Virtual Heights, Virtual Storm, and Virtual Vietnam."
And for the slashdot crowd, Virtual Pick-up, Virtual Bar-scene, and Virtual Date.
then someone should port the terror scenarios to an fps
SERGEANT BILKO WENT INSANE DUE TO WHAT HAPPENED HERE, can you survive?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If it helps legless vets, more power to them. You sound like the kind who spit on returning Vietnam vets.
Infuriate left and right
Let me know when they come out with Virtual Catholic Elementary School.
I'd be more sympathetic if these morons weren't voluntarily signing their lives away to an uncaring government.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Doesn't this show that intense violent video games might very well have a desensitizing effect on kids? I'm not talking about stupid theories about turning kids into killers, I just mean that they might react less strongly, and possibly less negatively, to violence after playing Grand Theft Auto. Something to think about. Anyone have any studies based on this?
p.s.
I'm a gamer and personally love GTA and many other other very violent games.
What if you suffer from PTSD induced in Second Life? Do they have a Virtual Virtual?
Infuriate left and right
I've had virtual sex so many times I'm desensitized to that now, too.
Sig this!
This reminds me a little of the film Brainstorm where they invent a device to record & playback sensations (audio/video/taste/touch/smell), but like any new & wonderful invention the military see what use they can use it for and develop recordings to torture people with.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Holy shit! When is this getting released!?
I'd play this!
I was stationed in Kaiserslautern and it was Oktoberfest. This pair of beautiful twins came to my room carrying four steins each... please help me relive this so I can... get over it.
The desensitization of an individual to violence through psychological conditioning is frequently featured in fiction, in the ST:TNG episode The Mind's Eye for example, as part of a multi-sensory simulation program necessary (supposedly) to create a Manchurian Candidate style assassin. Theses studies offer at least some proof that people can be conditioned to have a very casual reaction to an episode(s) of extreme violence, so perhaps the fiction is not too far off the mark.
"Other programs offered to treat PTSD include Virtual Airplane, Virtual Audiences, Virtual Heights, Virtual Storm, and Virtual Vietnam."
All but the last are for desenstitization of phobias (as are those for snakes and spiders). The same programs would work for PTSD as they're simply VR of exposure to a particular situation, but I can't recall there ever being a case of audience-induced PTSD.
Rizzo has also used his VR work in stroke rehab, a worthy effort. OTOH, he used it to 'erase' the well known and much decried persistent gender effects (males being better at it than females) in the mental rotation task (MRT) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_rotation . Not bad work, but he credited VR, not simply exposure and practice. One of my undergrad labs approached the Virginia Tech VR "tank" folks and asked for help in replicating this. The VR lab suggested using VRML instead for our own convenience. We did so, and we built two full sets of the MRT out of wooden blocks. We tested males and females from psychology as well as from engineering. We found the effect he did, but got the same effect from both virtual and manual manipulation. The effect was from practice, not specifically VR immersion.
To pull this back on topic, the above tends to support the traditional military medicine model for treating "shell shock" and "battle fatigue" (as PTSD was know for the past century) by exposure, ie. "return to the battlefield as soon as possible". Just as with electroshock therapy, much as I dislike the fact the numbers show it to be effective.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I'm seen some (virtual) things man... I've seen some (virtual) things you wouldn't believe, man!
When will we be able to simulate a software release in a controlled virtual environment to desensitize our programmers from the trauma of releasing bug ridden software onto our customers?
"You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world."
The New Yorker had a story about Virtual Eyerack some months ago. Nice that slashdotters have caught up LUL
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
I'm surprised that the summary makes no mention of EMDR. Speaking from personal experience, I've found that to be a very effective treatment for PTSD, and far less time-consuming than traditional approaches.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I saw this documentary....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dloyU83_2Yo
That they're going to be playing Quake, right?
zzz
Thank you for both of your posts. My sentiments exactly. I've actually had an American acquaintance of mine die of complications from undiagnosed diabetes because he couldn't get healthcare coverage in that lovely capitalist paradise. He was in his twenties and his death is frankly unnecessary and tragic.
In Soviet-inspired DDR Kaiserslautern, girls get over you .
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
when are they bringing out virtual republican presidential candidates?
I was doing research on PTSD a few years back for personal reasons. The studies I found were quite shocking to say the least. PTSD isn't just caused by being on the battle field or having one major traumatic event happen. Most of the things people go to therapists for; depression, anxiety, trust issues, etc. are all symptoms of milder forms of trauma. It's all PTSD. Dr. Amen, one of the leading psychiatrists in the world on brain scanning technology has scanned thousands of people. The scans he does sense chemical-electric activity in the brain. What he's found is very, very few people actually have healthy brain activity; most people have suffered from trauma. The general populace seems to see it though as "that's life" rather than seeing mental illness as the plague of humanity. Mental illness is truly a disease as it's contagious; people tend to reenact their trauma and in doing so traumatize others. And most treatment is laughable to say the least. Different types of treatment were tested on Viet Nam vets. The combination of talk or cognitive therapy with pharmacolatherapy and relaxation exercises only had a 15% recovery rate.Then I discovered a fairly new therapy called EMDR (Eye Movement, Desensitization & Reprocessing). It was developed and has been tested since the mid-80's. The recovery rate was far higher; 85% of all patience diligently engaged in weekly sessions recovered. So the question is, why isn't there more media coverage of this? Why aren't more therapists trained in something that actually works?
OK. Read what is really going on. The therapist is helping the soldier relive his experience. In other words, pull a video game off the shelf, call the desert Iraq and begin playing together. Just keep telling your partner, "It's ok! I got you covered!" Cheap and fun therapy and he gets paid to do this.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
do you find WMDs and the Iraqis greet you as liberator?
"Traditionally the best treatment for [PTSD] â" being raped . . . is to have the person relive the trauma using his or her imagination . . .
Now Clinical Psychologist Albert "Skip" Rizzo has developed a program that has had great success . . .
Other programs offered to treat PTSD include Virtual Airplane, Virtual Audiences, Virtual Heights, Virtual Storm, and Virtual Vietnam."
Or, for people who've been raped and need repeated exposure, AT&T have created a program called "our EULA"
Before i prattle on...
I wonder how many other people have been fucked by their recruiters, only to end up demoralized, deserting, and getting into constant trouble all to their detriment. All in all, i came out OK, but some people do NOT. Just back in 2007, some 3 to 5 US soldiers a DAY were attempting suicide in Iraq, and some 2,000 + attempts were documented. Many more than that might have and not be diagnosed as having PTSD and other issues on return to the US.
For an interesting story of one soldier who had PTSD after serving in Iraq around 2007, listen to NPR (I think it was "This American Life" or another program about a US Solider who returned to the US and ended up joining his campus' Muslim group in order to deal with his trauma and personal issues that the US military could not directly help him cope with.
"How about if Virtual Rape 1.0" applied to lazy recruiters and unsympathetic R&O (Receiving & Outfitting)/Indoc personnel's victims? My story is not NEARLY as painful as that of those who were shot at or had to kill because of being under orders to be where a fight was going to take place, but...
In my 10th grade year (81-82:
-- I was a member of the Henry Nichols Detachment of the Young Marines in Galveston
-- I was a member of the Ball High Army Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps and in one year was promoted to Cadet Staff Sgt, was a member of the match rifle team, shot expert, and earned some 8 or 12 ribbons, made squad leader, and then moved on the San Jose
From 11th through 12th grades (82-83, 83-84), i:
-- was a member of the Milpitas High Navy JROTC unit, earning several more ribbons, and was on the color guard. We didn't have a match rifle team. Before being allowed to join the unit, I was forced to give up my rank attained in AJROTC, despite national rules stating that cadets could transfer to other branches' units and retain rank if military aptitude and other things were demonstrable. I was already intent on joining the USN (and did later). But, unit/teenager politics prevailed, and some cadets who outranked me and whom i don't recall actually joining the military didn't want me to appear from nowhere and outrank THEM. They even conspired to have the unit commander request me to remove my ribbons and not wear more than a few of them if they couldn't find a corresponding NJROTC ribbon or medal.
After putting up with that bullshit for 2 years, I only made it to cadet Ensign, and had I stayed at Ball High, I would have been in line for battalion commander, from what I was told by one of my best friends who remained in the unit until we graduated (same ages/grades, but i left Galveston). I was Mr. A-Jay Squared Away, and the YM detachment commander and the JROTC commander were both squabbling over who had me first and which of their unit events took precedence over the other.
When i signed up for the Delayed Entry program at the recruiting station at McKee Road in San Jose, the US Army, USMC AND the US Air Force recruiters were *begging* my recruiter (i had two of them, as one transitioned out) to let THEM have me, in trade for two or three of their own. They'd all seen or heard of me, and sometimes saw me in full uniform, with medals and ribbons, Corfam/Patent Leather shoes, sharp-crease ironed uniforms and so on.
I filled out ALL the required paperwork my recruiter presented to me. I was eligible for early advancement to E-3 upon successful graduation of boot camp. But, ahhh, while I was placed in Drill Company because I was a member of the aforementioned military-affiliated units, my recruiter dicked up and did NOT process nor fill out any paperwork recognizing my service in the various units, and being stupid, i just *accepted* that the USN would do the right thing. It was painful, watching my fellow booters/shipmates with their paperwork all filled out properly getting their 3 stripes, yet i had to excel and outperform dozens of peers for over a YEAR after arriving at USS Flint (AE-32).
After leaving San Diego aft
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The next step is to use this pre-emptively as part of "training". A soldier exposed in advance to killing and extreme sensory input, will not only not need therapy later, but be more effective as his job.
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Seen Full Metal Jacket? Marine basic training isn't just to get someone's body in shape. It's to expose the mind to enormous amounts of stress and fatigue, to enable a person to continue functioning in those scenarios. The military academies do the same things. It's a simulation of war, not as tough as the real thing, but an attempt to do exactly what you describe, an ounce of prevention. And it DOES work, not everyone who goes to war get's PTSD.
Unfortunately, the same people who have made the traditional sarcastic comments on the subject here are also the same people who think it's damaging to have recruits get 'yelled at' because it's too stressful.
Great, another one to add to a long list.
Next, in tomorrow's news....
Fortunately, really dangerous stuff, like pot, or country moonshine, is very verbotten.
Congratulations, then, to our new absolutely guiltless overfolk.
The Old Man on the Mountain would be (or is) certainly proud of all these so very humane endeavours.
Prosit!
Other programs offered to treat PTSD include Virtual Airplane, Virtual Audiences, Virtual Heights, Virtual Storm, and Virtual Vietnam."
I'm pretty sure that if if you have PTSD from falling great distances, you have alot more to worry about than PTSD.
... is a subclass of phenethylamine-based medication that incorporates methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA (seriously!), and it used to be used for this until the US had it criminalized. It's currently being evaluated in a number of trials, most still in progress.
(Cue flame wars).
The real PTSD
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
I'm pretty sure something like this was part of the story in Miracleman: The Golden Age. The plot involved taking cold war spies and putting them in a recreation of East Germany.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
I know its the way of the world in academia that the PI gets the glory, but on here I'll pull out my tin cup...
;)
I worked at ICT for several years up til this march on Virtual Iraq. I'm a video game programmer by trade and did work on the renderer, collision system, networking,user interface, and AI agent system for controlling the in game agents. I designed and wrote Maya tools and a scripting system for artists to help put together scenarios, wrote the on disk installer, and really was the only engineer on the project for several years, although my friend Anton did the stereoscopic effects and a fine job mentoring me. There was also a codebase in existence when I showed up the first time, if that is what one might call it
I'm hoping to return to UCLA for the Phd or find another lab to work in; artificial intelligence is my field. At the moment though I'm moonlighting on a short term project and remain hopeful...
... What the fuck was that?
I've already posted so I can't mod you 'off topic', but that has NOTING to do with PTSD at ALL.
Hell, the story doesn't even have an ending! It just stops!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Virtua Tennis...
Interesting how this very expensive technology is being used to do what can be achieved easily using a cheaply produced drug. The goal of the therapy is to re-experience the taumatic memory without being overcome by fear, so that you can re-evaluate and process the experience. Far more effective to temporarily disable the parts of your mind that feel fear and pain during therapy and its a proven technique. Unfortunately, the drug in question is currently illegal.
Ironic that the fear and anxiety of the population at large about 'drugs' means that fear and anxiety in individuals is far harder to treat than it needs to be.
i can imagine this devolving into face-humping, bunny hopping, CTF, and alot of TK..cant we just use drugs instead?!
Good people go to bed earlier.
To get through Virtual Valerie.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
What, no Virtual CowboyNeal option?
Remind anyone else?
who read it as "Traditionally the best treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] is being raped"?
When Geiger counters are outlawed, only mutants will have Geiger counters
And the treatment for PTSD after a bad girlfriend? Virtual Valerie!
When will they have Virtual Election ready for Beta test?
-exposure, ie. "return to the battlefield as soon as possible"
When you have PTSD, there is a difference in returning to the actual battlefield and returning home. The coping mechanisms and traits that you learned on the battlefield are almost by definition very well suited to life on the battlefield; e.g., avoiding wide open spaces, keeping your weapon at the ready, sleeping in body armor, keeping your bags packed, hitting the deck pronto if you hear explosions, etc.
Those traits don't always emotionally expose themselves on the battlefield except as a dull fatigue and apathy. And once the soldier returns home, gets over the big homecoming storm of emotions, and tries to settle into a normal routine- that is when the problems begin. The soldier has been changed from a round peg into a triangle peg and is unable to fit his role in life. This part takes from 6 months to a year to manifest itself. It can come as a surprise to the soldier and to the soldier's family/friends, especially since they might notice it before the soldier does.
I won't go into a big discussion of the symptoms of PTSD. But for the remainder of this discussion I'll disclose that I do fit the textbook descriptions of PTSD: I stick to cover, I shop at night when there are fewer people around, I avoid family gatherings, I avoid talking to anyone who knows anything about who I was prior to my deployments, I sleep with three loaded guns under the bed, one next to the door, one in the silverware drawer, and the rest in condition 3 in cases. I have my deployment kit ready to go, right next to the door, and I tell people that I just leave it there so I can put my keys on it.
OK I'm getting off topic.
Here's the deal: Returning to a normal state of mind from wartime PTSD means that you need to readdress those old stimuli (bangs, sirens, crying children, burning garbage) and instead of thinking BANG, "OMG I'm going to die," you need to think, "Backfire/July 4th/deer season/etc."
It is very difficult to do that when your life WAS on the line and now it isn't. Try telling your brain that, OK, maybe BEFORE it was reasonable to think that an explosion was cause for alarm because you saw explosions kill people. Makes sense, I know. But now here in sunny boringville, explosions ain't no thang. They ain't no thang but a chicken waing. And THAT the problem facing chaplains and therapists (and families) since war began.
This VR device walks you step-by-step through a situation, all the while under the therapists observation. You would be answering questions the whole time: How does this make you feel? What do you imagine is around this corner? I noticed that you are hiding in a staircase; why is that? And so on. The point of all this is to make the brain aware of what it's doing and rearrange major parts of itself.
This task is difficult; I'd compare it to the task of convincing a xtian that god doesn't exist or, to be fair, convincing an atheist that god does exist. You're talking about changing who a person IS in a major way. The only thing that makes this cognitive therapy somewhat more effective than proselytizing is that it's based on facts and not faith, at least to some degree. The point of the therapy is to get a soldier to the point where he isn't acting like he's still on the battlefield. The therapist's job is to point out the differences.
I hope this helps someone. And any vets that read this: look up your local VA or vet center. There's no shame in getting help.
-B out.
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
The simple techniques of EFT (http://www.emofree.com/) seem to have a very positive affect on all types of emotionally charged internal problems. In the cases of treating PTSD, it has been extremely affective. My son is in the army and will be deployed next spring - I've talked with him about this and shown him how it works - I hope that it will help when he encounters the problems of being "on" 24/7 for months at a time.
Desensitizing someone may not be the best solution. This is a one step away from empathy and toward phycopathy.
If on the other hand it desensitizes their reaction to that single episode rather than the world I guess it could be a net posititve.
If I had just been buggered/raped by a 6ft taliban, the last thing I would want is to relive it in minute detail...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
MDMA is a treatment more applicable to situations other than Iraq veterans and with less emotional suffering.
http://www.maps.org/
Also, on the same site as TFA:
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jun/16-could-an-acid-trip-cure-your-ocd
Not to make lite of the problems others have with PTSD but wouldn't a virtual Iraq create a virtual PTSD?