Doctors Prescribe Virtual Reality for Returning Iraq Veterans

by Steve O'Keefe on September 28, 2010

A video tour of Virtual Iraq, courtesy NewYorkerDotCom.

One of the MINITRENDS discussed in the book MINITRENDS is the “Expanding Involvement in Virtual Worlds.” We are giving away that excerpt from the book at the MINITRENDS website. One of the timely ways virtual worlds are being used is to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in returning Iraq War veterans.

In an article on the blog NextGov, a new project from GovernmentExecutive.com, Bob Brewin tells us that as many as 35% of Iraq War veterans suffer from PTSD. Brewin reveals:

[T]he Army has instigated a four-year study at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma [Washington] to track the results of using virtual reality to treat the disorder.

The specific therapy cited in Brewin’s article is the VR program, Virtual Iraq, developed by Dr. Michael Kramer at the Veterans’ Administration’s PTSD Clinic. Caitlin McNally at FRONTLINE interviewed Dr. Kramer about the technology in 2009.

Virtual Iraq is a simulated Iraq War environment designed to help vets relive traumatic events as a trigger to talking about them or releasing pent-up emotions. “It is not a game,” says The New Yorker‘s Sue Halprin in a video tour of Virtual Iraq.

In one of the ironic twists to this story, Virtual Iraq was made from a video game, “Full Spectrum Warrior,” that was itself made from a training video used by the Department of Defense. The game was transformed into an immersion-therapy virtual world by Albert Rizzo, a psychologist working with the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California (USC).

In her detailed article for The New Yorker, Halprin collects anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of virtual therapy from several vets and therapists trained to administer the VR program. Virtual therapy is an example of the business, medical, and scientific opportunities opening up for software and hardware that can immerse people into artificial worlds in a convincing way.

The U.S. Army is now using Virtual Iraq in six locations. If the early reports hold, we can expect to see a large increase in the number of facilities offering virtual therapy, and not just for PTSD.

by Steve O’Keefe
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Army studying use of virtual reality to treat post-traumatic stress,” NextGov, 02/22/10
Source: “Virtual reality therapy in New York,” FRONTLINE, 04/23/09
Source: “Virtual Iraq,” The New Yorker, 05/19/08
Source: “Not a Game: Inside Virtual Iraq” (VIDEO), NewYorkerDotCom, 05/19/08