Feb. 20, 2007 — Traumatized U.S. soldiers are being treated for post-war psychological disorders by going out on patrol in a computer-generated "virtual Iraq," experts told a conference.
Skip Rizzo, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, has helped create a program that simulates life in the war zone for Iraq veterans suffering from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The ground-breaking treatment allows soldiers to experience the sights, sounds and even the smells of a war-zone, courtesy of wrap-around goggles linked to a startlingly realistic virtual world.
The idea is to re-introduce veterans to the experiences that have inflicted mental scars until gradually they are no longer haunted by the memories, a long-established therapeutic technique known as "exposure therapy."
"What we do is put somebody in a virtual Iraq but at a level where initially there will be minimal anxiety," Rizzo said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting.
"Say for example their trauma event was being blown up in a Humvee — we might start them off just standing in the desert next to a Humvee.
"Gradually we would put them in the Humvee and have them start driving down a desert road. Eventually over the course of the therapy you introduce elements that increase the realism — bombs going off, things blowing up.
"It's a gradual exposure to a realistic environment which you can't really do just through imagination."
Soldiers undergoing the treatment can be placed in a variety of situations — either as the passenger, driver or gunner in an armored vehicle or as a soldier on a foot patrol walking through an Iraqi city.
"You could be walking down one street and a child will come up to greet you, you could be walking down another street and a car explodes," Rizzo said.
