Virtual Reality and PTSD

In the most recent New Yorker magazine, an article details how the Defense Department is using virtual reality gaming software to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, an mental illness afflicting soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The program, which takes soldiers back into the streets and battles in Iraq with scenes that look identical to a kid's upscale video game, is called Virtual Iraq.

More than a year before, Nextgov editor at large Bob Brewin wrote an article about using virtual reality to treat PTSD while working for Government Health IT. If you think gaming software - or virtual reality exposure therapy, as its practitioners call it - has no place in treating these soldiers suffering from PTSD, consider this from Brewin's article: