Dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is one the biggest challenges facing American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. With doctors constantly looking for ways to treat this often debilitating condition, it should come as no surprise that a breakthrough technology is playing a key role in a new kind of treatment.
But what is a surprise is where the treatment gets its inspiration: a video game.
Scientists at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies have converted content from Full Spectrum Warrior, a combat simulator originally designed to teach soldiers about leadership and tactics, into an effective PTSD therapy tool.
The game, which has been released for the Xbox, PS2, and Windows, puts the player in an urban fighting environment. The ICT project adapts and adds to those virtual environments, transforms them into combat areas in the Middle East and, under the watchful eye of a trained psychologist, gradually exposes the soldiers to stimuli that resemble the traumatic events that created their disorder.
According to ICT Research Scientist Albert "Skip" Rizzo, the most efficacious approach to treating anxiety disorders such as PTSD has been cognitive behavioral therapy, where the patient is gradually exposed to what he or she fears. This is the classic approach used to treat common anxiety disorders such as fear of heights, fear of flying or fear of public speaking. But post-traumatic stress disorder is both more complicated and more generalized. "With PTSD, you have a more intense anxiety response based on traumatic events that are typically outside the sphere of normal human experience," he said.
The challenge comes in exposing the soldiers to stimuli that bring them back to a traumatic event - such as seeing someone getting shot or shooting someone - while not traumatizing them all over again. One way to address this challenge is to gradually expose the patient to stimuli that resemble the traumatizing event, but within the safety of a supportive clinical setting. In this project, the clinician will have control over every aspect of the game environment, changing scenarios, sounds, weather and the intensity of the experience. One goal of the treatment will be to create an emotional response in the patient that he or she can then work through with the therapist in a supportive environment.
"Our aim here is not to re-traumatize the person, but rather to re-expose them to relevant traumatic events in a graduated way that they can handle." Rizzo said.
For more on the project, check out http://jumpintotomorrow.com/template/index.php?tech=254&category=13.