Post Traumatic Stress Disor: A Case Study

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When it comes to Virtual Reality (VR), people will easily think about VR games. However, have you ever thought that VR can be a tool to solve psychological problems ? In fact, more and more psychologists find it is a feasible and effective method to use VR to treat Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder is a kind of mental disorder that can develop after a person is exposed to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, or other threats on a person's life (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). PTSD is not rare in victims especially in these days when wars, terrorist attacks and sexual assaults are still very most intractable problems in our society. Symptoms that PTSD patients most …show more content…

Virtual Reality can create a virtual environment according to patients’ specific trauma. In this environment, patients will get a sense of “presence” which make them feel they are in the real world in order to motivate their feelings and dig out the thoughts in depth (Valmaggia, Latif, Kempton & Rus-Calafell, 2016). What’s more, VR is manipulated by computers, thus therapists can change the levels of the triggers to align with patients’ performance which is more controllable and safer for the psychological recovery.
There are two famous research cases for PTSD treatment using VR. The first one is related to the 911 attacks. For this research, six VR sessions are conducted and each sequence in the VR menu was repeated until the distress level of the patients decreased by at least 50%. After completion of VR treatment, these patients no longer met criteria for PTSD, major depression, or any other psychiatric disorder upon examination by an independent assessor (Difede & Hoffman, 2002.).Another research is towards the veterans who develop PTSD after surviving from Irap war. In this research, the treatment consists of repetition of the traumatic memory with gradual addition of cues in VR environment. Both clinically and statistically significant results are shown after the treatment (Gerardi, Rothbaum, Ressler, Heekin & Rizzo,