Cockamamie war games will not fix combat PTSD

I am glad this article started out with the most important part of the delusion the DOD has been under. Computer games may be something the troops like but that does not mean they are good for them. Like drinking alcohol may make them feel better for a while numbing the pain they do not want to deal with, but afterwards they are worse off. Computer games feed adrenaline and adrenaline feeds PTSD. This is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard.

Can the rush in gaming help overcome the stress of combat?
By Matthew M. Burke
Stars and Stripes
Published: April 30, 2013

Former Army Sgt. Melissa Cramblett was once again pitched in battle against a tenacious enemy fighter. Her heart raced as she tried to save fellow soldiers from falling.

“I’m going to kill this mother[expletive],” she said to herself as adrenaline coursed through her veins.

Cramblett could put down the controller when violent combat video games like “Call of Duty: Black Ops” got to be too much, but it wasn’t so easy to flip the switch on her post-traumatic stress symptoms, which worsened each time she played.

She suffered anxiety and took her anger out on her family. She couldn’t sleep, but when she did, she was constantly haunted by a solider she knew who had been decapitated in an IED attack in Iraq in 2004. The soldier had been in the vehicle behind her; it was a devastating loss. Now, despite being a few years removed from the battlefield, she was back in Iraq and his bloodied body was standing over her.

“I can’t be in the same room [with someone playing],” she said of the increasingly realistic and violent crop of combat video games, some of which are developed with the help of active-duty and retired special operations troops. “It gives you that adrenaline rush that makes you feel like you’re back there.”

Cramblett has since asked her husband to get rid of the videos at home and she warns servicemembers with PTSD to stay away from them through her work with veterans groups Stay Strong Nation and the Veterans Who Care Foundation.

“I know I’m not the only one suffering from those games,” she said from her civilian job at a recruiting battalion in Portland, Ore. “I think it’s dangerous if a servicemember plays if they have PTSD.”

Despite the beliefs of people like Cramblett — and media reports that former servicemembers might have committed suicide after playing the games — violent combat video games remain a popular respite of troops downrange and a connection to their warrior past once they return home.
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It is time for the DOD and "researchers" to actually research PTSD before they come up with these cockamamie fix-it by breaking it approaches. This isn't rocket science! This is common sense.

When military training and exposures teach their bodies to operated under adrenaline rushes, the body learned to adapt. The best way to treat PTSD is to teach the body how to work without it again. Learning how to calm down will not happen with this. Sure they may have fun playing the games. Sure they may even get some relief for a while but what they will end up with is what will make PTSD worse.

Some "games" may work but that depends on how much the designer understands PTSD as much as it depends on how talented they are in creating the game. Violent games are part of the problem when kids think they can kill on a computer screen but find real life much different. When they left real combat and play the games again, there is a much different effect on what is happening inside of them and it is not good.