Disabled veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are playing a video game with their therapists, but it’s not for fun. The game’s high-tech virtual reality world recreates the soldier’s worst nightmare.

The Office of Naval Research and University of Southern California’s futuristic Institute for Creative Technologies combined resources to create the game to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Therapists guide veterans into their most difficult battlefield experience in order to gradually desensitize them.

PTSD Treatment Results Encouraging
Studies are ongoing, but of the initial 20 patients treated with Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan, 16 no longer meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD at post-treatment.

Imitating aspects of the popular game Full Spectrum Warrior, psychologist “Skip” Rizzo and his colleagues conceptualized the program that allows veterans to re-live traumatic experiences from their time in theater. Therapists use a touch-screen to add helicopter sounds, change the weather or even waft in the smell of body odor.

But the two cues that elicit the most intense physiological reactions? Rizzo says heart rates spike at the repeating gunfire of an AK-47 as well as at that most incongruous of battlefield noises: a baby’s cry.

Virtual Reality Sessions Evoke Painful Memories
“Eventually, as they tell their story, you find out that it wasn’t just a vehicle in front,” Rizzo says, “it was a vehicle with five other friends. The guy that died was going to be discharged in two months. You start to see a rich depth of story.”

Rizzo notes that in the VR game he created, therapists have total control. A session might begin with the soldier seated in a virtual Humvee, the sound of desert wind in the background. That can be enough to get the soldier talking about his experience. As therapy progresses, more sensations are added.

The game is so realistic that it’s possible to have the seat cushion vibrate when the virtual Humvee is turned on. The idea is to reintroduce the trauma-inducing events slowly, until the patient no longer reacts strongly to the stimuli.

Virtual Reality the Perfect Vehicle
The therapy particularly appeals to the largely young, male patients who are familiar with video game formats. It appears that a generation raised on X-Box and Wii doesn’t assign the usual stigma to a buddy’s mental illness when therapy includes virtual reality play.

See Related Disability Articles:
One report finds a link between concussions suffered in the battlefield and post-traumatic stress disorder.

How horses are helping veterans overcome post-traumatic stress disorder.