VR and PTSD: Healing from Trauma by Confronting Fears in Virtual Reality Environments
- Source: The Neuroethics Blog
What are the ethical implications of therapeutically re-exposing patients to trauma via virtual reality technologies? Of the 2.7 million American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, at least 20 percent suffer from depression and/or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other studies peg that percentage even higher.
As a chronic, debilitating mental illness, one PTSD symptom is hyperarousal, in which a person repeatedly re-experiences a trauma in the form of nightmares, panic attacks, and flashbacks.
One of the most long-trusted therapeutic approaches to PTSD is exposure therapy. Now, virtual reality technology is increasingly being used to simulate exposure to traumatic events and to environments related to the traumatic event.
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