Slashdot Mirror
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."
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 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.
It is supported by primarily by donations and is not affiliated with or sponsored by any US government agency.
Second sentence. You're an asshole.
From your link: "It is supported by primarily by donations and is not affiliated with or sponsored by any US government agency."
Try again.
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.
It's different in prolonged low-intensity combat situations. The WWII observation was that most troops were likely to develop debilitating PTSD after about 200 days of the stress of combat, but most soldiers could tolerate 100 days. In the big wars, most units didn't spend that much time in combat; when they did, it was intense, but most of the time, most units were not in contact with the enemy. Anybody who spent 200 days in actual combat in WWII was unlikely to survive.
In wars with no rear areas, like Iraq, soldiers are at risk for the entire time they're in theater. So, while the odds of getting killed are lower than in the big wars, PTSD type problems, like hyper-alert paranoia, are more likely. Having to watch your back for months on end messes up the minds of most people.
Tours are longer than in the Vietnam era, too. Few soldiers were in Vietnam for more than 6 months unless they wanted to be. The standard tour of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan is now 12-18 months, and many soldiers have been ordered back for additional tours. So more soldiers are being pushed to their limit.
Few soldiers were in Vietnam for more than 6 months unless they wanted to be.
Where did you get that idea. The "year in the 'Nam" was absolutely standard, and hardly anybody got out earlier than that unless they were dead, wounded, or completely loony.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.