Virtual reality therapy has been used for years to treat eating disorders, alcoholism, and phobias, according to the Wall Street Journal, but now it is also being used to help individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, including Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans.
“All we’re really doing here is taking an evidence-based treatment and delivering it with new technology,” said Skip Rizzo, the director of medical virtual-reality research at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “People will never forget the horrible things they’ve gone through. But that doesn’t mean they’ve earned a life sentence of pain.”