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| Send Page To a Friend | Thursday September 9, 2010 |
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The Pentagon has long used video games and computer simulations to ready fresh recruits for battle. Now it’s looking at virtual reality as a therapy tool for ex-soldiers traumatized by war. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is spending $4 million over the next three years to investigate how therapists can use virtual reality to treat veterans suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). New wars are creating a need for the new tools. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine last July found that between 15 and 17 percent of soldiers who served in The new research announced last week is aimed at treating a new crop of soldiers. Commander Russell Shilling, the program’s manager, said he hopes that the therapy’s video game qualities will “resonate well with the current generation of warfighters.” The goal of the Navy’s research is to look at ways that traumatic wartime events can be treated before PTSD sets in and becomes a chronic condition. The research will build on already existing virtual reality remedies. Virtually Better, a company in Atlanta that crafts cyber environments to help phobics overcome fears of flying, public speaking, heights, and storms, will simulate the sights, sounds, and smells of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Virtually Better’s digital recreations will be merged into a therapy tool based on the U.S. Army’s Full-Spectrum Warrior video simulator, which trains soldiers in urban fighting. Albert Rizzo, a professor at the The Veterans Administration currently uses a more primitive form of virtual reality to help therapists treat Vietnam War vets suffering from PTSD. In a step toward greater realism, the ONR research will use smell to take soldiers back to their painful memories more completely. Virtually Better is interviewing soldiers who served in Loaded into cartridges and released by a device connected by a USB port to a computer, the scents will be triggered as clients navigate through the virtual environment. PTSD is classified as an anxiety disorder. The goal of virtual reality therapy is to break a cycle of avoidance by repeated confrontations with the past. Ken Graap, the president and CEO of Virtually Better, said that virtual reality treatments have reduced 25 to 30 percent of symptoms in |
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