Virtual Iraq has only treated 50 PTSD veterans

FACING the DEMONS
By DAVID KOHN
The Baltimore Sun
Friday, July 11, 2008

WASHINGTON — To a soldier who has been in Iraq, the sights, sounds and smells are familiar: the pop of an AK-47, the flash of a bomb, the stench of cordite.

The location, however, is not.


Here, in a small, windowless room at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, researchers are using the latest video game technology — plus a smell machine and a vibration platform — to help patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Known as "Virtual Iraq," the treatment could help many soldiers who don't find relief from medication or traditional psychotherapy.

"It really jogs their memory," says Col. Michael Roy, who runs the digital therapy program at Walter Reed.

"It puts them back there very powerfully and makes them realize a lot of things they had consciously or subconsciously repressed."

Proponents of the new treatment say that once these memories are available, patients can begin to talk with therapists, eventually rendering the phantoms less terrifying.

Nationwide, only about 50 soldiers have undergone the treatment in the past three years — leading some critics to say the treatment is still unproved.