Writing for the New Yorker, Sue Halpern reports on the success of combining exposure therapy with virtual reality to treat veterans with PTSD. The therapy works on the principle of habituation; by revisiting the trauma through a simulation, called “Virtual Iraq,” the subject can break their association with outside stimuli, disconnecting “the memory from the reactions to the memory.” Before anyone gets the wrong idea, Grand Theft Auto IV it ain’t: subjects don’t have the ability to shoot at anything in the simulation. Veterans describe their experiences to a psychologist, who then tries to recreate the conditions in the simulator, right down to smell:
At the click of a mouse, the therapist can put the patient in the driver's seat of the Humvee, in the passenger's seat, or in the turret behind a machine gun, and the vehicle moves at a speed determined by the patient. Maybe the gunner in the turret is wearing night-vision goggles—the landscape goes grainy and green. A sandstorm could be raging (the driver can turn on the windshield wipers and beat it back); a dog could be barking; the inside of the vehicle could be rank. Rizzo's idea is that giving the therapist so many options—dusk, midday; with snipers, without snipers; driving fast, creeping along; the sound of a single mortar, the sound of multiple mortars; the sound of people yelling in English or in Arabic—increases the likelihood of evoking the patient's actual experience, while engaging the patient on so many sensory levels that the immersion in the environment is nearly absolute.
One of the other benefits of this approach is that it doesn't seem to have the same kind of stigma as traditional therapy. Many veterans suffering from PTSD don't seek treatment because they're afraid it will adversely affect their careers. The problem is so serious that the Wall Street Journal reports on an emerging debate in the military over whether or not veterans with PTSD should be eligible for the Purple Heart, partially as a way to reduce the stigma of asking for psychological help. Not everyone is in love with the idea, critics cited in the article point out you don’t need to actually be in combat to get PTSD, and being in combat is a requirement for getting a purple heart
As a treatment tool, virtual Iraq seems to be pretty successful over a long period of time. Apparently video games aren't a sign of the apocalypse; who would have thought in 1972 that Atari would be connected to important advances in medical science?
—A. Serwer
