Can You Get PTSD From A Virtual Experience?
Virtual environments almost certainly induce genuine anxiety, says Grainne Kirwan, a psychologist who specializes in cybercrime at the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design, and Technology in Ireland. For example, your physiological and emotional responses to entering a dark alley in a video game may be comparable to those you’d have in a similar real-life situation. “But would it be to the extent of initiating post-traumatic stress disorder? That hasn’t been demonstrated,” Kirwan says.
There have been scattered accounts of people victimized in role-playing games such as Second Life or World of Warcraft and suffering in the aftermath. But no large-scale academic study has ever been written up, Kirwan says. And even if a player were to have a disturbing experience, he could avoid compounding the stress by steering clear of that game, or online games altogether, in the future.
“I think that somebody would have to be psychologically compromised to begin with to mistake the events that go on in the virtual world for real events,” says Skip Rizzo, a psychiatrist at the University of Southern California. That doesn’t mean virtual experiences aren’t powerful, though. In fact, Rizzo uses virtual-reality (VR) environments to help patients with PTSD relive controlled versions of traumatic events in order to move past them.
The first such work was done in the mid-1990s, when researchers put people afraid of heights onto virtual footbridges and balconies to expose them to the source of their fear and gradually help them overcome it. Later, the same type of therapy recreated scarring scenes from the Vietnam War and the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center so survivors could come to terms with the events. Rizzo’s team also built a system for veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which participants could be subjected–under a clinician’s care–to more than a dozen different scenarios from the Middle East.
To create the most immersive VR therapy experience, Rizzo incorporates extra sensory stimuli. He adds realistic sounds such as boots on gravel, military banter, and even indigenous birdsong. But it’s not yet clear if these bells and whistles make the treatment significantly more effective. “We have a smell machine, but does it really matter?” Rizzo asks. “That’s a good empirical question. We just go ahead and use it.”
In any case, veterans traumatized by war are more likely to find sympathy–and treatment–than World of Warcraft gamers. People tend to blame the victims of virtual assaults, Kirwan has observed. “They might ask, Why didn’t you just turn off your computer?” While online victims may not have PTSD per se, they could still benefit from therapy. Shaming just makes them harder for psychologists to identify, highlighting the need for more research. “If anybody has experienced this, they’ll want to know that they’re not alone,” Kirwan says. “It happens, and it’s not okay.”
This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of Popular Science.
(责任编辑:行业动态)
- Travel Back in Time and Uncover Old
- These $315 denim panties are deeply upsetting
- US waiting to see if North Korea wants to engage in diplomacy
- Dog gets super pumped every time someone scores a basket
- 实干担当抓落实 多措并举促发展
- Scientists discover where the huge dinosaur
- Got VR? Must Have VR Games
- Ten Hag backs himself to 'restore' Man Utd
- Playoff bid 'gone', says Rooney after DC United loss
- 微视频广东:在推进中国式现代化建设中走在前列
- North Korea makes rare humanitarian donation for Myanmar: UN data
- 市医院女职工登山纪念百年“三八”节
- Twitter sure is removing a lot of accounts these days
-
Top 10 Most Significant Nvidia GPUs of All Time
Founded in 1993, Nvidia is a youngster when compared to other semiconductor companies. However, its ...[详细] -
Civic group launches campaign to bring 'hanbok' into daily life
A local civic group launched a campaign to incorporate "hanbok" into daily life Tuesday, proposing t ...[详细] -
Foreign workers to bear more medical costs
Foreign workers will have to pay for 20 percent of their hospital treatment fees starting next year ...[详细] -
Pentagon: THAAD won't be directed toward any third nations
The U.S. Defense Department said Thursday that the THAAD missile defense system to be deployed to So ...[详细] -
Where to pre-order the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 ProGoogleGoogle Pixel 9Starting at $799 (plus get a free ...[详细]
-
Tom Hiddleston's Chinese Centrum ad is a real wild ride
It was brought to the internet's attention on Friday that Tom Hiddleston recently starred in a Centr ...[详细] -
A refugee who took a selfie with Angela Merkel is suing Facebook
A Syrian refugee who made headlines after he took a selfie with German Chancellor Angela Merkel is s ...[详细] -
2009年,石棉县屠宰行业宰杀生猪37067头,比2008年增加了2265头,增幅达6.1%,继续保持了良好的增长势头,满足了县城的鲜猪肉需求,为石棉的菜篮子工程作出了贡献。去年,37067头生猪鲜 ...[详细]
-
Naver, Kakao strive to combat deepfake porn spreading online
(Getty Images Bank)The rise of explicit and nonconsensual deepfake pornography illegally being share ...[详细] -
...[详细]
- It's Unnecessary But, AMD Is Basically Lying About CPU Performance
- 验收新房 理清思路看重点
- New York's MTA only had one IT guy capable of rebooting the system
- Poor Galaxy S9 sales aren't the beginning of the end of Samsung
- 7 Reasons to Explore Boston’s Lesser
- Now Putin is causing drama for Uber drivers in Russia
- Poor Galaxy S9 sales aren't the beginning of the end of Samsung