From what I’ve seen of treatment for PTSD (one of my best friends has it, and I’m in the same therapy group as him – clinical depression FTL), it mostly involves reliving the experience to try and fully process it. My friend is writing down what’s happened to him, as reliving rape is impractical. This sounds similar; they even use SMELLS.

But, you know, I don’t really know that much about it. My knowledge of PTSD is very limited. But I do know that if it doesn’t work, the technique will ceased to be used. If it does, it could help thousands and thousands of people in the long-term.

Note that I have to go somewhere later today, so I probably won’t be online to reply to this thread.

Even when the guy in the seat next to me was shot, and his shirt sprouted a red bloom, it wasn’t frightening. I had never been to Iraq. I had never been to war. The scene did not conjure any memories for me, traumatic or otherwise. It was, as JoAnn Difede said of stairs on September 10th to a person who worked in the World Trade Center, neutral.

But not for the guys who’d actually experienced combat.

If subjecting them to FURTHER trauma would help things, then they’d just send them back to Iraq again and eventually everything would sort itself out.

But, i still carry that war is best represented as a random set of events, not a showreel.

Then that they use a game is meaningless, might as well force people to sit though war movies.

Though, i’ll admit i didn’t click the link when i saw “an extensive New Yorker article”, that shit be whack!

It’s a modified version of FSW, and they just use it for image generation. They add their own sounds, smells, and other VR features. The soldier doesn’t control anything, just the images and sounds are enough to bring up repressed memories. The soldier they follow in the article would go home and cry after sessions.

If the results of the soldier in the article aren’t atypical (they successfully treated his post traumatic stress disorder), that could be a very important and even life saving technology. If they could put a system like that into widespread use they could cut suicide rates (which last I saw were quite high for Iraq vets). The article also mentions soldiers might be more likely to engage in VR treatment, because it doesn’t have the negative stigma of just going to see a shrink (even though that’s what they’re really doing :P).

Anyway I dont believe this game or its techniques would desensitize them to violence, its aim is the trauma, their real world training, does it much better.

Tbh, GTA IV is probably the most brutal game out there right now. Shooting people is so damn realistic (Euphoria making them act almost like they would IRL) I avoid it if I can, which is hard considering the nature of your work. FSW is definately not the best choice to desensitize people.

FSW is kinda…vaguely… no- barely traumatic. Doesn’t really make sense how this can help folk with PTSD at all!

You clearly never played Ten Hammers. On Authentic. :-p