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The New VA Health Plan Is Second Life
theodp writes "Remember when Catbert informed Dilbert that the new company health plan is Google? In another case of life imitating Dilbert, combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder are being provided with a US Army-sponsored virtual world in Second Life (slideshow) to help deal with their condition. Developed by USC's Institute for Creative Technologies, it is hoped that the veterans-only virtual world Coming Home and its planned activities will promote conversations that can help reduce PTSD. The Avatar will see you now, Sergeant."
griefers with IEDs
This is a logical continuation of conference calls and working from home. It's like going to a self help group meeting, without actually having to drive over there (saving time, money, and polar bears). That, and you have an additional layer of anonymity, which might help lower the threshold for newcomers who are too ashamed of joining.
I think a similar system could work very well for other groups such as AA and NA.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Looking at the way the player holds his head, they even made him look depressed. Or there's been a murder and Horatio's on the job
People with PTSD have a hard time dealing with reality. I'm not sure that helping them escape from reality into some virtual world is really going to solve things.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I've been following a lot of similar stories recently and I don't understand why agencies and institutions wouldn't build on an opensource infrastructure that they can control (e.g., something like openlife). What happens if Linden labs goes belly-up?
My company used to pay for gym membership to improve health. This was to counterweight the countyr club golf memberships provided to executives. But a few years back they swithc the wellness program to monthy web pages. Claims this is an improvement because everyone gets these announcements!
According to the Coming Home page:
How exactly does one have "non-religious" Stations of the Cross? Taoism, at least, can be approached as a philosophy rather than a religion, but I can't think of any approach to venerating the torture and execution of some ancient rabbi that doesn't involve a belief that the poor guy was some sort of religious sacrifice.
If the idea is that religious imagery can be useful in treating PTSD, well, fine, let's discuss if that's true, and how we can balance that against First Amendment concerns in a government-funded treatment program. But "non-religious" Stations of the Cross rings about as true as the disclaimer in those ads in the back of local free paper: "Busty Blond Will Make All Your Fantasies Come True! $100/hr. Non-sexual".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I know that this is slightly off topic, but the character in the pictures is always looking down and to the left. Maybe he is severely depressed or something. I don't see a problem with trying this out, but their screenshots seemed rather depressing.
Perhaps they'll recover from the war-related PTSD, but you've introduced a whole other traumatic situation by bringing Second Life into the mix. How long will it take our brave veterans to get over the horror of bombardment via millions of floating penises?
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
This approach actually makes good sense. It's not a digital psychiatrist. Rather, the aim is to use virtual reality to re-create the combat environment, but without the risk of physical injury or death. The traumatized soldier can then confront the environment that caused their psychological problems, rather than recede behind a wall of denial. Denial is obviously a powerful protective mechanism, but it can also impair normal social function. As I understand it, the virtual scene is replayed over and over and, because there's no longer any real danger, the soldier/patient is able to gradually habituate; the scene (and his/her earlier actual combat experiences) thereby gradually generate less anxiety.
Whether it works or not remains to be seen, but virtual reality is pretty powerful (can you say "video game"?).
I'd have to say it really is probably up to the individual soldier whether that will work for him or not. Everyone handles it differently, and self-medicates differently. Many of my old comrades cannot watch war-related movies or watch/play FPS video games like COD, GRAW, etc. I say go for it-if it helps just a few people it would be worth it.
Can't they just play WoW?
Linden Labs attitude recently, especially with moves to this Adult grid has to be very aggressive with account banning.
Usually a ban comes from a person on the "G-Team", which appears to be fairly ad-hoc, being non comprimising when a user does something silly, and this is backed up by flame wars outside of SecondLife between G-Team members and users.
Given a new user could be a soldier unused to the 3D way of things, let alone the foibles of Second Life, I wonder how LL handles that users ability to tow the party line. Or is the user somehow confined to base, in a virtual sense.
Because I am not sure any contact with the Linden Lab G-Team would be that positive for the soldier.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
I'll let experts of PTSD and experienced people who have used the service comment of the justification and effectiveness of using SecondLife (SL) for this disorder.
But as an experienced SL user I can say that SL has taken the edge off any fear of heights I use to have. I am still very cognitive of the danger and existence of falling situations, but the distracting and (I would argue) interfering aspect is almost gone. But I will also add I did not have a phobia so great that I couldn't pain my barn and house's metal roof on summer.
I am now physically limited in some ways and can not climb around roof tops, but have found SL a huge resource, and foresee my 7 YO son internationally collaborating with other students and educators on HS projects using something like SL.
I am one of those people that can not believe the ignorince most people seem to have on the usefulness of virtual world (done well).
I made a list a while ago on the things I have used SL for and if interested, here it is:
--- start list ---
Some things I like to do in SecondLife
Discussions:
Philosophical topics interest me; The meaning of life, role of spirituality in life, for example.
Support Groups:
Emotional Support; There are lots of people that believe human interaction is all that really matters in this life. There are groups of people who want to share their moments with you, and support you. Maybe you have a family member who is suffering and you are trying to help â" come and talk with others who have walked that path already.
Information Support; Full of people who know where you can get information that is valuable to you. It's not what you know, but where to go. If you need information Cancer, autism, ADD, Bi-polar, anything - there are people who are willing to help you learn about it.
Poetry:
Creating, reading, and listening to Poetry. Stretch your mind. Create and listening to poetry reading.
Writing:
Short stories, stories for publication, how-too write for effect or setting the scene, etc.
Hanging Out:
There is a coffee shop I hang out at sometimes and talk with people who wonder in. Regulars gather. There are public areas where people hang-out. Go Say âoeHiâ to a stranger and see what happens.
Listening or Playing to Live music:
There is something about live music that I like. It's not over produced, the people aren't always the greatest, but they are real and interact with chat comments and requests. What every type of music you like, there is likely someone trying to entertain you with it.
Do you have talent? The is little technical know how to set up a stream, but you don't need to, you can just use 'voice'.
Listening or Doing Comedy:
Stand up people who want to see if they are funny, they do so in SL. And like sex even when it's bad â" it's good. Give it a try yourself â" if you have a funny bone in you.
Teaching or Listening to Lectures:
There is a huge number of things you can learn about, with no limit to it. There are real teachers who share what they know.
If you have knowledge and what to teach people - do it. Everyone has something significant that could teach others.
Workshops:
Do or teach some Avatar hands-on learning.
Learn how-too:
Teach, build, create. The tools are in SL and there are good video's on how to almost anything you can do in a virtual environment.
Building:
Anything, objects existing or imaginary. Chances are good if you can imagine it â" it can be built in SL.
Build for education, entertainment, etc, just because you can.
Modeling:
Make what you build work in a simulated physical sense. Build and experiment with a trebucket, clock inners, flying cars. The simulation is pretty good in sl, so just build a pile of huge bricks and knock it over (onto a house).
Want to know if something physical you are planning to build will work? Try
If we could only extend this idea to fight all our wars on World of Warcraft PvP servers, that would solve a lot of problems.
MEERKAT
and as a bonus its completely GPL (latest version not available for Linux)
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Is there ANYTHING the government cannot fuck up? For christ sakes, these soldiers need MEDICAL CARE, not *VIDEO GAMES*!!!!! If this is the kind of competence we can expect from big government beurocrats waiting to steal our money and use it to pay for video games instead of surgery and MRI's, then why don't we all just kill ourselves now instead of waiting for the liberals to do it for us with socialized medicine!?!?!?!
Second Life is definitely *not* a viable platform for long-term businesses. Why? 1. Linden Lab actively holds hands with long-term Griefers like Tizzers Foxchase (Tizzers Teardrop) - aka the SL Woodbury University group. The new CEO Mark Kingdon doesn't seem to mind long-term griefers casually crashing simulators as well as stealing (copybotting) someone else's work and then selling it. 2. Linden Lab staff does not actually appreciate corporations/customers using it's Second Life VW platform - they'd rather laugh their heads off and call people 'losers' behnd their backs. ( Evidence: http://bit.ly/C0VM4 and http://bit.ly/LT7Hv ) 3. Your business can't grow very far in Second Life unless you actively *suck up* to the Linden Regime - applaud every single move made by Linden in order to gain a *HUGE* advantage over the in-world competition. Illegit *Bribing*, basically. ( Source: http://bit.ly/LT7Hv ) Corporations would be better off using some other platform, like Blue Mars and OpenSim, even though both are currently in public beta. Anonymous Coward? More like, if I reveal my identity, Linden Lab will ban me & take my business away, for whistleblowing! Though, they can't really sue me, since my statements are well backed up with evidence.
You are the kind of person who makes it hard for reasonable opponents of Obama to so much as hold their heads up in public!
More seriously and less Scottishly, this is a very good idea. Read _Achilles in Vietnam_ to learn more about PTSD, and you'll see the point. Remember the need for cameraderie mentioned above; PTSD sufferers need to be able to communicate, and this is the most convenient way. Controlled reenactment of battlefield events would be a very useful addition, as a key part of PTSD treatment is learning to overcome and work past the traumatizing event, but this is a real step forward. Heck, the military acknowledging that PTSD so much as _exists_ is a real step forward.
Also remember that the military is managing to look after itself reasonably well under this administration. We should be very glad that Obama's tsars don't have much interest in the army, and thus he's left Gates in office...