Page 634 - Total War on PTSD

I am a Clinical Psychologist and Director of Medical Virtual Reality (VR) at USC. Over the last 23 years, my lab has conducted research on the design, development and evaluation of VR systems targeting the areas of clinical assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation across the domains of psychological, cognitive and motor functioning in both healthy and clinical populations. This work has focused on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Autism, Alzheimer’s and other clinical conditions. In spite of the diversity of these clinical areas, the common thread that drives all of this work with digital technologies involves the study of how VR simulations can be usefully applies to human healthcare beyond what is possible with traditional 20th Century methods.
* To view some videos on this work please go to: http://www.youtube.com/user/ albertskiprizzo
Introduction
VR technology has undergone a transition in the last 20 years taking it from the realm of “expensive toy” into that of functional technology. These advances stand to offer new opportunities for clinical research, assessment, and intervention in the field of mental health and rehabilitation. Since the mid-1990s, VR-based testing, training, teaching, and treatment approaches have been developed by clinicians and researchers that would be difficult, if not impossible, to deliver using traditional methods. During this time, a large (but still maturing) scientific literature has evolved regarding the outcomes and effects from the use of what we now refer to as
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