Ted Sines, Marina Fulcher, Mike Bode, Bobby Considine, Kyle Penn
In the U.S. alone, about 5.2 million adults struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Many do not understand why people with PTSD act the way they do. When specifically talking about men that have come home from war, their traumatic experiences will stay with them for as long as they live. Many symptoms that come with PTSD include anger, flashbacks, avoidance, bad dreams, feeling on edge, sleep deprivation, frustration, etc. Daily activities may also become difficult to accomplish. Each individual experiences symptoms in their own way. When dealing with these symptoms, it can be difficult for family members and others around them to understand what and how they are feeling. Family members may become scared about the fact that their loved one might give up. This can happen to anyone. There are many sources available for treating PTSD, but there is no knowing if those resources will get rid of it completely.
PTSD is a grueling disease that affects millions of Americans per year. It is important we learn the facts about PTSD before we try to understand what people who have it go through every day. We need to understand that the outbursts these people may have is nothing they can control, so we need to be considerate towards that. We also need to learn how to treat someone with this disease and or the right means of getting them help. Everyone is different when to comes to getting help. Some people react better to certain types of medication and others respond better to therapy. With this Virtual Reality (VR) experience, you will be able to finally feel how they feel when they are going through the PTSD like symptoms.
So, what can we learn from this about PTSD specifically? With the help of VR, you will be able to be in the mind of someone suffering from PTSD. You will be able to experience the flashbacks to the battle grounds just like them, as well as the dreams that come along with it. You will also be able to see how this disease can affect your everyday activities and life. You can learn what it is like to affect your family members by having this disease as well. The whole point is to make people aware and help them learn the struggles of former US soldiers and the struggles of PTSD. It is a problem that gets swept under the rug and that simply cannot happen anymore.
Over the years, PTSD has been increasingly common in not just soldiers, but people who have been through traumatic events like 9-11. VR has been a new form of treatment for soldiers as well as trauma victims. People who suffer from PTSD are basically submerged in the exact same situation that caused the trauma. Soldiers who suffer from PTSD are submerged back into the war zone that has caused them to suffer from PTSD. It will start from the beginning of the experience of that day and then it will lead up to the traumatic event that caused the PTSD to occur. The event might be seeing a fellow soldier killed in war or falling victim to a car bombing. By being submerged in the recreation, soldiers can go through the experience again.
It might sound crazy for someone who suffers from PTSD to have them relive the experience that caused them trauma, however, there have been some positive results from this tactic. There have been soldiers who have left VR sessions with astounding results. Soldiers could have an incredible decrease in the amount of depression and stress. In just six one hour sessions there was a significant change in their person. Being in the recreation and reliving the events of that fateful day helped ease the depression and the stress they were in following the immense trauma of war.
Inside the VR, you will experience the traumatic event in the Army that fits your case, or that is making PTSD severe for you. Throughout the app there will be different modes that will make the scene or experience less traumatic and that can be raised to higher levels once you mastered the previous level. Through the experience, you will start off on level 1 which will show sand dunes, bodies lying on the ground, and hearing gunshots. On level 2, you will experience a tank rolling through and see a live house being blown up, with the continuation of gun shots. On level 3, you will experience a more intensive traumatic feeling. You will see bodies lying there with blood, people being shot at, EMT carrying bodies and other soldiers crying in the background screaming for their men. The appearance and resolution of the app will run off 1920 x 1080 which is (960 x 1080 per eye). This will lead the patient or person using this VR to feel like they are in the scene and replaying their traumatic experience.
When the user first puts on the head sets, they will experience a menu that pops up. Inside of the menu you will find the difficulty level, whether you want sound, if you are color blind, where they want the location to be, and lastly how many years it’s been since the incident. Inside the app, you will also have two controllers that will make it so you can interact. Having the opportunity to interact with the scene will help the patient better understand what they went through because they will be able to act like they are shooting or anything along those lines. With VR getting bigger and bigger, we expect this to work and grab the patient’s eye when they see it.
When it comes to using VR to help soldiers and veterans deal with their PTSD, Bravemind is the one that most soldiers and veterans use. Bravemind allows the soldier or veteran to go back to a very similar place where their trauma occurred and allows them to “experience it again in a virtual world under very safe and controlled conditions” (Rizzo,Hartholt). Our VR app, PTSD Insight, is for the families, practitioners, and counselors. It allows them to get somewhat of an understanding so that they are not left in the dark when they try to connect with the soldier or veteran on a day to day basis. It will show the user the conditions that the soldier or veteran went through. Seeing someone go through a PTSD episode is very scary to see. Now because of PTSD Insight the families, practitioners, and counselors will also learn how to pull someone that is having a PTSD episode out of that episode and bring them back to reality in a calm and efficient manner so no one gets harmed or injured.
When families, practitioners, and counselors see PTSD Insight, they will know how to connect with the soldier or veteran after using our app. By experiencing a glimpse of war with PTSD Insight, they will have a general idea of what is bothering the soldier or veteran. It also allows the person to know what subjects are off limits to talk about when around the soldier or veteran. The person also using PTSD Insight will also be able to grow their knowledge about PTSD and what someone goes through when they experience a PTSD episode. Going through life with PTSD is a difficult thing for soldiers and veterans to go through, but to know that someone else is there to help them go through it allows them to relieve some of that pressure of dealing with PTSD. Soldiers and veterans dealing with PTSD say that support is great but connecting with another human being that is going through or has experienced that same thing is lacking in their recovery process. So, having PTSD Insight for the families, practitioners, and counselors; allows for that lacking connection with the soldier or veteran.
So how do we this VR system in the hands of the right people? First, we target the counselors that work with people suffering from PTSD. If we can get the counselors ear on something like this, it is very likely that they would be able to relay that information to the families affected by this disease. Other people have tried to use VR systems like this in the past, so we need to find a way to separate ourselves to make the VR successful. How do we do this? We go to any military convention or veterans banquet we can find to get the word out about or VR system and how it can help families who have someone with PTSD around them or close to them.
Unfortunately, there may be some barriers in the way of being successful with this VR system. How can we afford something like this? How can we even create something like this with little technical design backgrounds? Well, cost is an issue no matter what you are doing. Like many other organizations when they start out, we will have to take out loans. Hopefully, we can get our product out there and maybe an organization will back us to get us started with the production costs. We would also have to hire some people in the tech design industry to help us create the VR experience. It will not be easy in the beginning but it’s doable and our product can help a lot of people in need.
The expansion of PTSD Insight will increase year by year. Every year, we will look at PTSD Insight and see how we could make it better for the user. In years to come, we expect to have grown PTSD Insight. PTSD Insight only contains one branch of the military, but we look to expand to every branch of the military to help every possible soldier or veteran dealing with PTSD. Expanding the branches of the military is ensuring that every person gets the help that they need. Once all the branches of the military have been explored, moving to other traumatic experiences is where PTSD Insight is going next. PTSD Insight will help those that have gone through traumatic experiences like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Boston Bombings, etc. By expanding to other traumatic experiences, we can reduce the amount of people that experience PTSD.
When thinking about expanding the market of PTSD Insight, the market must not have something like PTSD Insight. PTSD Insight will be expanded to the United States Government, hospitals, and old age homes with the new updated version that contains all the types of causes for someone to have PTSD. By expanding to these markets, people who are not veterans get a chance to live a normal life again without worrying about having a PTSD episode. These people will be able to free themselves of PTSD after using PTSD Insight.
In conclusion, VR can help many soldiers and others to move past their traumatic experience. There are things that family members can also do to help, such as asking questions, offering resources in the community, and understanding what they are going through. VR can be a very effective treatment method for veterans. It will help them deal with their symptoms and even reduce them. With guidance, veterans can improve their condition and hopefully move on with their lives. VR can show a sense of reality and presence in a way that is hard to understand unless it’s been experienced. Who knows, maybe in the future doctors’ offices will have VR therapy for those with PTSD, if proven effective.
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