Page 644 - Total War on PTSD

evidence-based trauma-focused approaches of prolonged exposure, cognitive processing therapy, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), where people are encouraged to confront things that emotionally hurt them initially and process them in different ways. Thus, assisting a patient in the process of confronting and re-processing difficult emotional memories in VR has been shown to also be an effective approach in the treatment of PTSD.
In 2003, the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies began the process of developing the BRAVEMIND system. The design vision was to provide a tool for clinicians in the treatment of PTSD and to produce a system that might also be of value as a research tool for measuring, documenting, and learning about PTSD. Using such a controlled stimulus environment to conduct studies that would help to better understand the brain and biological factors that could serve to further inform the prevention, assessment and treatment of PTSD. As a treatment tool, BRAVEMIND was developed to address PTSD by offering a means by which the natural avoidance tendency could be overcome in trauma sufferers. The value for using VR for the treatment of PTSD is supported by previous reports in which patients with PTSD, who were unresponsive to previous imaginal PE therapy treatments, went on to respond successfully to Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET). As well, a number of clinical trials have also further supported its clinical efficacy (see recommended readings at the end of the chapter).
BRAVEMIND allows clinicians to gradually immerse patients into any of 14 virtual Iraq and Afghanistan environments representative of contexts where they
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