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Military Uses Virtual Iraq To Treat PTSD
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Sep 17, 2008 06:39 PM
from the virtually-fixed dept.
from the virtually-fixed dept.
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."
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Other PTSD programs (Score:5, Funny)
* 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!
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* Watching anything on Fox News.
* The new Firefox "Awesome" bar.
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*
* profit
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While I can't comment on chairs, I am sure, I have seen people surviving watching Uwe Boll movies or spewing Microsoft marketing crap in front of other people.
On the other hand, if there is going to be some public beating of Microsoft marketdroid anywhere near SF Bay Area, count me in.
Hey.. Isn't that the same technique as Dianetics (Score:2, Informative)
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... (Score:5, Funny)
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
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Virtual Childhood
Virtual Public Education
Virtual DMV
Virtual Waterboarding
Of interest to Slashdotters... (Score:5, Funny)
...do they have Virtual Girls?
Re:Of interest to Slashdotters... (Score:4, Funny)
Virtual Ex-Wife?
Parent
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Here, here. They can start with something really tame, like just nagging about cleaning the gutters. Then move on to the hard stuff ("Why are your loser friends playing Warhammer in the garage again?"), then eventually the really insane, PTSD-inducing stuff ("Do these jeans make me look fat?") I see a huge market for this device, and not just among geeks.
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Virtual Getting Out Of Parent's Basement?
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Continuing, with the theme, here are some more despicable PTSD-causing life experiences:
Virtual: "I'm Pregnant!" ; "Children" ; "Wife: Let's go shopping!" ; "Let's install Windows on this computer!" and worst of all "0 - Troll on /."
Hard Sell (Score:5, Funny)
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Clearly, you've never visited the Pirate Bay before...
Virtual Vietnam (Score:2, Funny)
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.
And for the Slashdot Crowd... (Score:5, Funny)
And for the slashdot crowd, Virtual Pick-up, Virtual Bar-scene, and Virtual Date.
wikileaks should get this info (Score:2)
then someone should port the terror scenarios to an fps
SERGEANT BILKO WENT INSANE DUE TO WHAT HAPPENED HERE, can you survive?
Using virtual worlds to desensitize (Score:2, Insightful)
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 about PTSD in Second Life? (Score:4, Funny)
What if you suffer from PTSD induced in Second Life? Do they have a Virtual Virtual?
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They've done it for warcraft [theonion.com]. ;)
Well... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)
"I've had virtual sex so many times I'm desensitized to that now, too."
It's the calluses. Switch hands.
Parent
Brainstorm (1983) (Score:2)
Manchurian Candidate Anyone? (Score:2)
Not (intended) for PTSD (Score:4, Insightful)
"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 [wikipedia.org] . 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.
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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
Re:Not (intended) for PTSD (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
EMDR (Score:2)
Other kinds of therapy (Score:5, Interesting)
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Do you have any references for your assertion that we are all mentally ill? Forgive me for being skeptical, I do think "that's life."
Could you explain the brain differences you allude to between healthy and unhealthy people? I have a hard time accepting your premise that, as I see it, is that most of us are in an unnatural state of being screwed up.
EULAs? (Score:5, Funny)
"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 [slashdot.org]"
treatment or prevention? (Score:2)
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."
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I saw all those comments hinting that this treatment seemed sadistic, and I immediately thought, sadistic? try watching network television....
I suppose it would work though, I just get an image of Will Smith in a particularly nasty Clockwork Orange therapy film... over and over
Waste? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it helps legless vets, more power to them. You sound like the kind who spit on returning Vietnam vets.
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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
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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 cheap
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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 th
Thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
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From your link: "It is supported by primarily by donations and is not affiliated with or sponsored by any US government agency."
Try again.
Re:Might work for some things... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, if the armchair
Parent
Re:Might work for some things... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Parent
Re:Might work for some things... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Might work for some things... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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Re:Might work for some things... (Score:4, Funny)
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*
Parent
Re:Boo-Hoo... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent