"James Spira of the Naval Medical Center San Diego will work with Ken Graap of Virtually Better, Inc. (Atlanta) and Dr. Albert (Skip) Rizzo from the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles) to evaluate tools to treat PTSD in active-duty military members. Virtually Better will help integrate the sights and sounds of combat, as well as smell and other sensory factors. Rizzo is developing a flexible virtual reality toolset for therapists, using assets from the U.S. Army’s “Full-Spectrum Warrior” videogame/training application.
Brenda Wiederhold at the Virtual Reality Medical Center (San Diego) will work with James Spira and. Rizzo as well as other experts on PTSD to study the effectiveness of virtual reality for treating acute PTSD in non-combat personnel such as medics and truck drivers. These service members are exposed to their own unique stresses and require different types of virtual reality scenarios.
Researcher Hunter Hoffman at the University of Washington (Seattle) and Sarah Miyahira of the Pacific Telehealth & Technology Hui (Oahu, HI) will work with Raymond Folen at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii to examine the effectiveness of using a virtual reality based cognitive behavioral treatment for U.S. warfighters suffering from acute PTSD."
Red Herring says,"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."
A manuscript at the Army Science Conference 2004 says that, "In 1997, researchers at Georgia Tech released the first version of the Virtual Vietnam VR scenario for use as a graduated exposure therapy treatment for PTSD with Vietnam veterans. This occurred over 20 years following the end of the Vietnam War.
During that interval, in spite of valiant efforts to develop and apply traditional psychotherapeutic approaches to PTSD, the progression of the disorder in some veterans severely impaired their functional abilities and quality of life, as well as that of their family members and friends.
The tragic nature of this disorder also had significant ramifications for the Veteran’s Administration healthcare delivery system often leading to designations of lifelong service connected disability status.
The use and value of Virtual Reality for the treatment of cognitive, psychological and physical disorders has been well specified (Glantz et al., 2003).
The first use of VR for a Vietnam veteran with PTSD was reported in a case study of a 50-year-old, Caucasian male veteran meeting DSM-IV criteria for PTSD (Rothbaum et al., 1999). Results indicated post-treatment improvement on all measures of PTSD and maintenance of these gains at a 6-month follow-up.
This case study was followed by an open clinical trial of VR for Vietnam veterans (Rothbaum et al., 2001). In this study, 16 male PTSD patients were exposed to two HMD-delivered VEs, a virtual clearing surrounded by jungle scenery and a virtual Huey helicopter, in which the therapist controlled various visual and auditory effects (e.g. rockets, explosions, day/night, yelling). After an average of 13 exposure therapy sessions over 5-7 weeks, there was a significant reduction in PTSD and related symptoms.
Similar positive results have also recently been reported for VR applied to PTSD resulting from the bombing of the World Trade Center (Difede & Hoffman, 2002).
This initial evidence suggests that VR may be a promising component of a comprehensive treatment approach for combat-related PTSD."
Robt; SO AIN'T IT TIME TO START MAKING THE TREATMENT WIDELY AVAILABLE TO THOSE AFFLICTED?!
While there may be need or reasons to keep tweaking the process, there's damn sure need and reasons to apply what we've got NOW!related::otherInstances:
The project, "Efficacy of Virtual Reality in Treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in U.S. Warfighters Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan Combat Theaters", is a collaborative research project with the VA Pacific Islands Health Care System and Tripler Army Medical Center. The research initiative is the first to explore the use of VR to treat PTSD in returning warfighters.
Scientists at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies are converting content from a game designed to teach soldiers about leadership and tactics into a therapy tool to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in soldiers returning from war in Iraq. The project is headed by ICT Research Scientists Albert "Skip" Rizzo and Jarrell Pair and is funded by the Office of Naval Research.
Hoffman will collaborate with a team of researchers preparing
to use VR exposure therapy to treat U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq
with PTSD. This research appears in the August, 2004 issue of Scientific American, and the first case report was published in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior in 2002 . It was funded by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, and the National Institutes of Health.
Virtual reality is also helping patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to JoAnn Difede, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the Program for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Studies in the department of psychiatry at Cornell University Weill Medical College.
Difede collaborated with Hunter Hoffman, Ph.D., at the University of Washington in Seattle, to create a virtual reality program she could use to treat people who developed PTSD after surviving the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.
