Call Of Duty?

"Virtual Iraq" is an article written by Sue Halpern which focuses around the new technological treatment of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). The story in this article focuses around mainly one patient, "a marine I'll call Travis Boyd". The article begins by telling of his background and deployment in Falluja, Iraq. From there we being to learn about the PTSD that he suffered after his second deployment in Iraq. "I'd avoid crowds, I'd avoid driving, I'd avoid going out at night." PTSD had taken over Travis' life. This was all until he began to use a new experimental treatment for this disorder. It is called Virtual Iraq. It is a video game type setting in which the user would feel as though they were back in the army. The creators tried to make it as real as possible by adding in all of the details that were told to a counselor during a session with the patient. The whole point of this type of treatment was to fully immerse the patient back into what they had now feared. However it is not what people sometimes refer to as the sink or swim method, which is where you would fully immerse someone into there fears and have them find a way of conquering them. Through the Virtual Iraq method, and since PTSD is such a sensitive matter, the counselors are able to gradually increase the on screen effects for the soldiers to experience. Overwhelming the patients at one time can have a serious effect on them considering their level of PTSD already. "When it was over, I'd go home and cry" says Boyd of the early treatments using Virtual Iraq. It was so much for him to handle that the counselors and not simply just jump into treatment without first assessing his condition. "One time I mistakenly clicked my mouse and all of a sudden a bullet came flying out, and I had to tell the patient that I was sorry and didn't mean to do that" says Rizzo, one of the founders of Virtual Iraq. This is exactly why all of the counselors using this treatment program need to be extremely careful, one small mistake could set a patient over the edge of depression when it comes to this.
Contrast this now. Call of Duty, the famous war like video game. This could almost be the Virtual Iraq treatment program. It is merely representation of the war. Personally I think that it could be considered a kind of slap in the face to soldiers out there especially after reading that last quote. It shows to me how that simple button that he pressed to fire a bullet on screen could make a patients condition even worse, where as we the game players press the button so many times without even thinking about what the war is really like. Call of Duty seems to be very realistic and can almost offer a fake sense of war because you see it as just a game where as a soldier might not even be able to look at the game anymore because of the PTSD that he now suffers from. I feel that it takes away from the credit that we give soldiers because we are able to have a representation of it right in front of us in out own living room.
Back to the treatment. It is designed to be life like for these soldiers to allow them to face their fears on different levels. Describing one scenario from the treatment, Boyd tells us"Inside were two insurgents, one on his knees with his hands tied behind his back, the other dead on the ground. A baby was crying. I moved on." What stood out to me most was the fact that a baby was crying and he was able to move on. This is all to show to us how he was progressing in his treatment. Still I found it incredible how much detail was put into this program. In the end however he was able to successfully complete the treatment and now lives a normal life with his wife. He tells us at the end of the article how he is now able to talk about his experiences once again. This reminded me of one of the ending clips from the WWI movie "All Quiet On The Western Front" in which the main character returns home from war and is asked to speak about how glorious it was to serve and fight for his country. He does not in fact do this, being in front of a large group of young volunteers for the war when asked to speak he tells all of them how terrible it was for him and everyone else over in Europe, (which was very well documented throughout the film) and that they should not go and fight. The whole time when he does talk to these students he is very irritable and also quite shakey. Thinking back on this clip it seems that the main character had developed PTSD from WWI.
The one thing that Carroll assumes trough all of this which I have to disagree with is that we will take to the video game treatment very rapidly because, as he claims, we grew up on them. This might not be the case for all and cannot be one of the reasons backing up your theory for the treatment, otherwise I feel this was a very well written and extremely engaging article.