The other Major Hassan, healing PTSD with Avatar

Wonderful idea considering few therapists understand this kind of PTSD. There is a difference between combat PTSD and the rest of the causes of PTSD, although law enforcement comes in very close. The difference is, they are participants in the traumatic events themselves. Much like crime survivors are part of the event, they cannot be treated the same way a witness is treated. Very different experiences behind this wound caused by traumatic events.

It's easier to put yourself if the position of others when you can really relate to how you would feel and react to it happening to you but how do you relate to risking your life day in and day out with people trying to kill you at the same time you need to do the same as part of your job? It's not just about witnessing horrific events, too often, it's about having to create them as well.


Avatar Teaches Social Workers How to Talk With Iraq and Afghanistan Vets
BY Lydia Dishman
Mon May 17, 2010

Lieutenant Rocco’s recently returned from deployment in Iraq and he’s having trouble acclimating. He sits near the edge of a sofa in his social worker’s office, still dressed in fatigues, and sporting a buzz cut. Even though he says he’s okay, he admits to getting flack from his boss about his lack of productivity and that he’s arguing with his wife. "There are things I don’t want to talk about with her. Things I can’t get out of my head," he says.

The more you listen in on Lieutenant Rocco’s session, the easier it becomes to forget the slightly odd cadences of his speech and the blocky outlines of his clothing which point out that the Lieutenant isn’t a real person. He’s a digital avatar designed to be a training tool as part of University of Southern California School of Social Work’s curriculum for the Master of Social Work degree with a Sub-concentration in Military Social Work. A virtual patient like Lieutenant Rocco teaches prospective counselors how to deal with soldiers returning from duty where they may have witnessed life-altering atrocities.

One in three of the nearly two million American soldiers returning from tours in Iraq or Afghanistan will have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). You can’t look at them and see battle scars or missing limbs. They're not wounded in the traditional sense, but they're wounded nonetheless.

PTSD manifests in a variety of ways, from substance abuse to domestic violence, even suicide, which is reaching epidemic proportions. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs found suicides among veterans increased 26% between 2005 and 2007. Today, one in five suicides involves a veteran, and they can’t rely only on a 1-800 hotline to stem the growing tide. "If [a soldier] comes in and says ‘I’m suicidal,’ you can’t mess it up," says Dr. Anthony Hassan, director of USC’s Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans and Military Families (CIR).

Though the staggering statistics are reaching unprecedented levels, the good news is that with early screening and access to adequate treatment and counseling, the psychological effects of combat are treatable. The challenge, Hassan says, is to train a new generation of clinical social workers to deal with veterans’ mental trauma.

As a retired Major in the U.S. Air Force, Hassan knows that having a military concentration is critical to the success of the social workers’ therapeutic training. "If a veteran doesn’t make a therapeutic alliance [with the social worker] and come back after the first visit, they won’t come back," he says, leaving them open to a number of problems. That's where Lieutenant Rocco comes in.

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Avatar Teaches Social Workers