Page 705 - Total War on PTSD

you do it at a gradual pace and prevent avoidance with a good clinician in a safe environment, patients get better with time. They might get anxious at first, but anxiety extinguishes as they continue and can sometimes be replaced with a sense of empowerment, following effective confrontation of the traumatic event. We’re also not aiming to erase memories of the trauma — people still remember what they’ve been through but those memories don’t have the same emotional potency to cause psychological distress as they had before treatment.
More recently, we have seen tremendous advances in the enabling technologies for creating VR experiences. This has resulted in the availability of lower cost and higher fidelityVRsystems. Thishasalsobeenprimarilydrivenbyinvestmentsfromthegaming and entertainment industries and, along the way, it is resulting in better equipment, software, and computer graphics. However, the power and value of VR goes well beyondgamingandentertainment. It’sinitspotentialtocreatenewmethodsfortesting, training, teaching, and treatment of clinical health conditions. Moreover, the clinical applications are far ranging, from PTSD to Autism, Pain Management to Physical Therapy, and in the use of artificially intelligent virtual humans in the role of virtual patients for clinical training or as healthcare support agents. The capacity to produce a controlled stimulus environment where users can confront their fears safely, or learn new ways socially interact with others via virtual human roleplaying, or even as a way to become distracted from acute pain, presents opportunities for advancing clinical care that didn’t exist just 20 years ago.
This chapter provides a brief summary of applications that illustrate the current use of VR to address the behavioral healthcare needs of those suffering from the psychological effects of trauma. Since our work in this area was really instigated by the
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