In class today we watched several videos on different types of therapy. The one that caught my eye the most was the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This occurs after one person has been put through such a stressful situation. After the fact, they begin to relive the situation until it complete takes their life over. The people that were treated in the film were soldiers that had recently gotten back from Iraq. The therapy they were given was a type of exposure therapy. They were put into a room and brought into a virtual reality where they were put in similiar situations and had to find a way out of them. This exposure made the soldiers stop reliving the situation at home and brought them back into reality that they were safe here. This type of therapy seemed to be very effective.
I really enjoyed the video we watched in class, I thought that the technique that they used with the virtual reality was a great approach to helping PTSD. One of my teachers in high school had just come back from Iraq the year before I had him as a teacher. He spent one whole class one day just telling us about his experience at war and all about his flashbacks. He didn't have PTSD as severe as some, but he did get flashbacks that would stop him during the day and nightmares that would wake him up during the night. He said that it was very scary and stressful to come back and re assimilate himself in the normal world. When he came back, he took 3 months off before he returned to our school to teach.
ReplyDeleteIf this technology had existed many years ago we may not have had as many "shell shocked" soldiers as we did coming back from World War Two and Vietnam. This could have helped many war veterans to help them live out the rest of their lives normally. One of my friends grandfathers suffered from PTSD and his life was never the same because of it. He could not hear the sound of gunshot without reliving all of the painful memories. His family said he became a shell of his former fun loving self. If this technology had existed during that time them maybe he could have lived a better life after war.
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