With a push of a button, special effects will appear — a mosque’s call to prayer, a sandstorm, the sounds of bullets or bombs. “We can put a person in a Virtual Reality headset and have them walk down the streets of Baghdad,” says University of Southern California psychologist Skip Rizzo. “They can ride in a Humvee, fly in a helicopter over a battle scene or drive on a desert road.”
This is no video game, nor is it a training device. Rizzo and colleagues are developing a psychological tool to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, by bringing soldiers back to the scenes that still haunt them.
>>Wired1.28.2005
The theory — and by my good estimate it’s sound — goes: face the trauma until we may face it calmly. Regroup & repeat as needed.
I have my own traumas. We all do. Mine seem more In My Face than some. Compare mine with some other’s and all I can say is it sucks to be me. But so what?
I’ve lost a few bets on racehorses. I usually want to kill myself afterward. Yeah — over 5 bucks. Can you believe that?
Me neither.
That’s what I’d realize on long walks homeward after I lost my last $5 on the races. I want to die all the time. Not over 5 dollars. It had more to do with the times as a child I was unconscionably molested.
So goes.
Like the Vet who submits voluntarily to Virtual Combat for PTSD treatment I’ve peered long on my walks homeward into trauma’s ill effect on me. Until I learned to laugh in spite. Wrote a good story about it. Now I don’t want to die near as much as I used to.
Good for me.
I’d rather blog-post than gamble these days. Sworn all bets off? Sh!t no. Bets are Fun. But I have better luck lately when I chase Truth down — or over the rollercoaster top — in writing.
Recent Comments