  The American Veteran's On-Line News Magazine Click here to make VA Watchdog dot Org your homepage VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 09-18-2008 |
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The American Veteran's On-Line News Magazine Click here to make VA Watchdog dot Org your homepage VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 09-18-2008 |
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FOR PTSD -- Discover Magazine writes of "curing" war wounds and says virtual reality therapy will "free veterans of their PTSD."
Last week we had a story about DoD's use of
virtual reality therapy for PTSD ... and how some believe, including one
quoted veteran, that VR is a "cure." That story here... Now, Discover Magazine has jumped on the bandwagon with a new article using the "C" word. It appears that DoD is really working the media to push the message that VR is the "cure" for PTSD. For more about virtual reality therapy, use the
VA Watchdog search engine... click here... For more, specifically, about Virtual Iraq, use
the VA Watchdog search engine... click here... For more about the search for the elusive "cure"
for PTSD, use the VA Watchdog search engine... click here... Today's story here...
http://discove Story below:
------------------------- Curing the Wounds of Iraq with Virtual
Therapy by Kathleen McAuliffe
To help people plagued by nightmares,
flashbacks, and relentless stress related to a traumatic episode—being
raped, narrowly escaping the collapse of the Twin Towers, witnessing a
buddy die on the battlefield. Traditionally the best treatment for
post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] 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. How does virtual reality address this problem? We immerse the individual in a virtual world to allow him or her to vividly reexperience the episode in a safe and controlled way. In Virtual Iraq, a soldier with PTSD recounts what happened, and a therapist seated before a computer then creates an environment that captures the essential elements of the episode. Say the soldier was driving in a Humvee convoy when the vehicle in front of him blew up. By donning special goggles, he can see a reenactment: To the left he sees a desert landscape; straight ahead, the Humvee. The simulation is done on a vibrating platform, so he feels the humming of the vehicle’s motor or the rumble of the exploding IED [improvised explosive device]. We also pipe in sounds and smells: the call to prayer in Arabic, diesel fumes, even the body odor of the guy next to him. The simulation starts off relatively tame. Then, 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.
Virtual reality won’t replace a real-life therapist, but I hope it will become a powerful tool. How do you teach a pilot to fly? A simulator beats a textbook in training how to deal with wind shear. If we want to help people cope with obsessions and anxieties from fear of public speaking to agoraphobia, why not train them in a virtual setting that closely matches the very world in which they’ll have to function?
The first step is to establish virtual therapy’s effectiveness in different realms. We have good initial evidence with our first 18 completers of Virtual Iraq that the intervention works for PTSD. Of that group, 14 no longer meet the criteria for the condition. The goal is to build on this kind of research and push forward the virtual revolution in psychology. ------------------------- -------------------------
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