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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.
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
...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
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.
If it helps legless vets, more power to them. You sound like the kind who spit on returning Vietnam vets.
Infuriate left and right
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!
The point isn't to make you feel better. The point is to be able to address what happened and move on....it's not a huge surprise that talking through in a controlled, supportive environment what happened might help people address the situation and resolve it.
/. people have other methods that have been empirically backed by a number of excellent studies, I'm sure that these people would be all ears. They're really just doing their best to help, and would love some more.
Of course, if the armchair
You do know that exposure therapy is the most effective (and sadly, just about the only) treatment for PTSD? It really is amazingly effective, and has been backed up by a large number of peer-reviewed studies as being an excellent tool.
This seems to be the next generation of exposure therapy. I say bravo to the VA for pushing lead-edge therapies (that have significant literature backing their efficacy) that may help save a number of our individuals form lifetimes of hurt. One of the tragedies of this war is that many of our promising youth are being lost not only to death, but to serious mental illness. If we can help them overcome their problems, we may not lose the significant talent that many of these young soldiers have.
The problem is that the individual is likely to suffer from flashbacks whenever similar simple events happen in the real world. If they are walking down the street, and hear a loud noise such as a car backfiring, a container door being slammed, or some construction work, it would trigger those memories causing them to freeze-up, get angry or be unhappy.
The idea of this treatment is to desensitize them to these events so that those memories aren't triggered.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"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 couldn't imagine being a rape victim and being subject to this.... "Welcome to Virtual Rape 1.0 - Simulated Rape to help enable you to conquer your fears"
Your evaluation period for Productivity 1.0 has ended. Please purchase more coffee to continue using this product.
Other than showing that you're an asshole, your post shows you haven't thought about what it's like to live around guys with PTSD. They have families and neighbors who, you know, didn't volunteer to sign their lives away. Innocent bystanders, you might even call them. Programs that help treat direct sufferers - even if you don't think they deserve it - can make a huge difference in the lives of everyone around them.
The city I live in has a very large military presence, and I welcome every bit of assistance the government can provide in helping them return to society.
Think harder.
Yet another way for the veterans affairs office to waste taxpayers dollars.
Do you think the cost of this intervention is anything like the cost of the war to begin with? It's a trivial extra cost. Decent nations factor in the cost of being nice to the vets after a war.
More importantly, is the cost of the intervention more than the cost of having the PTSD sufferer continue to suffer? Fixing up a young traumatised soldier is an investment: from one rather crass point of view, the government effectively invests in creating taxpayers, and I bet refurbishing a soldier is much cheaper than creating a new taxpayer from scratch. Hint: you personally benefit from the availability of other taxpayers.
Most importantly, these people are worthwhile human beings who got a bit buggered up. Being decent human beings ourselves, we should want to spend our money on fixing them up. Hint: if you do not want to do that, you are not a decent human being.
Yeah, I'm a public health guy who lives in a country with a decent health-care system [read, better than the US system]. That means that I know the good economic and moral reasons for the society to provide physical and mental health care. Doing anything less is frankly sub-human. Arguing for less is, at best, ignorant. At worst, it is malicious and inhumane.
PS. yes, that sort of whining about health expenditure makes me really angry and anti-american. It is amazing how so many Americans believe that their system is superior and the only morally defensible system. Empirically, it is more expensive and less effective than other Western systems. People die because of your theoretical whining about 'socialised health systems.'
Yes, yours is a great country and all, but it's got a few damned ugly patches, and the worst of it is that so many of you don't have the ability to criticise yourselves and actually change something.
Please, go forward, patch yourselves up, be strong, be good, get back to being the envy of the world. I would like to revisit the USA one day, but first, I need to want to be there. End rant.
From your link: "It is supported by primarily by donations and is not affiliated with or sponsored by any US government agency."
Try again.
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.
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.
I was planning to get through a dungeon full of dragons... we were all ready, and then Leroy.... BWAAAA! *SOB*
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?
"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"
What would they do, simulate an attack and then throw on a porn video with your face crudely pasted over the others. This sounds like either a sick video/video game or a bad reference. Lets hope at least.
Of course, if the armchair /. people have other methods that have been empirically backed by a number of excellent studies, I'm sure that these people would be all ears. They're really just doing their best to help, and would love some more.
I've got one... don't send our young men and women into wars unnecesarily.
PTSD is a lot less impacting if you never have to experience the traumatic part.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
What happened? Was he eaten by a grue?
Morale is high because Iraq seems to be turning around. I know, I know, it's been said before.
But if "body counts" is your best metric then you have no choice but to rejoice, because they're nowhere near what they were in 2006. Iraqis have finally turned against the insurgency and started cooperating with US troops. The result has been a dramatic decrease in violence in Iraq, and now most of the country - including the former strongholds of the insurgency - is actually voluntarily under Iraqi control. The difference between the Iraq in the throws of insurgency and the Iraq of 2008 is enormous.
If you're a Marine who passed up college or came out of retirement to go to there, seeing it turn around is about the best thing in your whole world. It means you get to go home (or at least on to Afghanistan); perhaps with some shame, but ALSO with some pride. That's what's got your morale high.
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.