As VR literally transports your vision and hearing to another dimension, the tech was found to be useful in treating patients with psychological diseases. In 2017, NBC wrote a piece on how psychologists used VR to treat PTSD suffered by war veterans using an off-the-shelf VR headset.
Transporting patients to a virtual battlefield and dubbed “USC Bravemind”, the therapy aims to give sufferers a chance to relive their traumas over and over again until they are capable of overcoming them. Jimmy Castellanos, an Iraq War veteran, was one of the participants in this program that had his life changed after several sessions; “Before the treatment, 80-90 percent of my dreams were Iraq related. Now I can’t remember the last time I had one. I live in a completely different way now.”
One of the minds behind the project, Professor Albert “Skip” Rizzo, “You can place people in provocative environments and systematically control the stimulus presentation. In some sense, it’s the perfect application because we can take evidence-based treatments and use it as a tool to amplify the effect of the treatment.”
Continue reading in Tech HQ.