What is PTSD?

Anxiety disorder with the following diagnostic features: Initial Traumatic Event usually threat to physical life or safety. At least 1 Re-experiencing Symtpoms: Nightmares, Flashbacks, etc At Least 2 hyperarousal symptoms: sleep problem, concentration problem, anger, startled easily, At Least 3 avoidance symptoms: Not talking, not thinking of it, avoiding reminders, These interfere with social and/or occupational functioning.

Why Video Games. Despite the many negative connotations and studies showing possibility for addiction in adolescent, video games on many occasion have allowed those with psychiatric problems the promise of an altered reality, and if not that, then at least an arena from which to be active cognitively. TETRIS STUDY: Basic Idea. Memories are labile in post trauma period. so the game of tetris in that period will interfere /compete with the trauma memroies for placement into long term memory.

METHOD: trauma movie will take place of trauma and then afterwards tetris will be played after 30 min. leave flashbacks, , but leave voluntary memory intact. 40 ppl, watched real trauamatic death and injury scenes. Both groups feld same mood deterioration.

Then ten mintues of tetris or sitting quietly. And they recorded the number of flashbacks during that 10 minute period. and then they kept a daily diary over 1 week of the flashbacks they had. Then they returned to lab and did an Impact of Events Scale Test. They were then asked about details of the film(testing voluntary memory) EMDR (eye movement while thinking of trauma may work in the same way.
RESULTS Over the week the Tetris group felt significantly fewer side effects. On returning , they had lower IES numbers. And voluntary memory was intact.

Diary results not shown in first bar graph.

CONCLUSION Recently formed sensory perceptual memories are vulnerable to manipulation due to the occupation of limited cognitive resources by the visuospatial task. Fingerpattern tapping during film helped, but counting backwards from three did not help. They looked for a visuospatial memory task. Tetris has been known as such a task with its emphasis on rotation. Interestingly like ptsd it has been noted cause its players flashbacks of the blocks. ACTIVE DUTY STUDY Basic Idea: On average, 2 years after the traumatic event, an Average of 7 sessions of 90 minute sessions where active duty military personell would undergo virtual reality memory exposure in both a pleasant environment and one that resembled the actual event. The therapy session would occur at that time with the patient allowed to tell account the details in first person while in virtual reality. And then their homework was to listen to it repeatedly. Their score was measured at the end of therapy. Method Assessed with PCLM(PTSD Checklist, Military Version), then on average after a week, they had session 1 and were reassessed throughout the 7 session course. Then a final PCL M would be taken. The session included a head mounted display eMargin z800, and played Virtual Iraq. An Enviroscent Palette was also used to simulate scents.

Results

PCLM mean score , Pre and Post Treatment.

Conclusion This being a retrospective study with a group of people who were already largely being treated for PTSD, there are many confounding factors, as well as biases that could account for the seemingly positive results.

CAPS Measurement Study.and PCLM

Method: Frequency Have you ever had unwanted memories of (EVENT)? What were they like? What did you remember? IF NOT CLEAR: Did they ever occur while you were awake, or only in dreams? [EXCLUDE IF MEMORIES OCCURRED ONLY DURING DREAMS] How often have you had these memories in the past month (week)? 0 Never1 Once or twice 2 Once or twice a week 3 Several times a week4 Daily or almost every day Intensity How much distress or discomfort did these memories cause you? Were you able to put them out of your mind and think about something else? How hard did you have to try? How much did they interfere with your life? 0 None 1 Mild, minimal distress or disruption of activities 2 Moderate, distress clearly present but still manageable, some disruption of activities 3 Severe, considerable distress, difficulty dismissing memories, marked disruption of activities 4 Extreme, incapacitating distress, cannot dismiss memories, unable to continue activities

Future More studies to come. The Military is actively invested and engaged in producing video games for the military, as well as involved in researching PTSD. More will come. Civilian PTSD also has been studied

with the use of video game environments and has been shown preliminarily to be helped by the therapy. References: Homes, E A, James, EL, Coode-Bate, T, Deeprose, C.(2009) Can Playing the Computer Game Tetris Reduce the Build-up of Flashbacks for Trauma? A Proposal from Cogntive Science, PLoS ONE 4(1) January 7, 2009 Reger, GM, Holloway KM, Candy, C, Rothbaum, B, Difede, J, Rizzo, AA, Gahm, GA. (2011) Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 24, No. 1, February 2011, pp. 9396 ( C 2011)