American soldiers who returned from Iraq suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been successfully treated with a virtual reality simulation of the conflict, scientists announced today.

The “virtual Iraq” system has already been used to help four soldiers to relive and come to terms with their distressing experiences, who have reported significantly fewer symptoms such as nightmares and flashbacks since receiving therapy.

The first patient to benefit was a 21-year-old woman who had often had to deal with the casualties of suicide bombings in her military support role, and three others have also improved after completing a five-week course of treatment.

About two dozen other US servicemen and servicewomen are now receiving similar treatment, as part of a trial led by Skip Rizzo, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. Another four or five patients have dropped out of therapy.

He told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco that the early results look very promising.

“I’m very cautious about making any grand claims at this point, with such a small number of patients, but the basic scores of PTSD have shown not just declines but clinically significant declines,” Dr Rizzo said. “The scores of people who scored quite highly before treatment now fall below what is considered the baseline level for PTSD.”

The system aims to help traumatised military personnel to confront the disturbing events they have witnessed by gradually exposing them to increasingly distressing situations in a controlled environment.

Patients wear a virtual reality headset, through which they experience sights and sounds connected with the event that triggered their PTSD, as well as appropriate vibrations and even smells, such as those of gunpowder, diesel fuel and burning rubber.

“What we do in virtual reality is to put a person in virtual Iraq, at a level that they can handle but with some minimal anxiety,” Dr Rizzo said.

“So, say their trauma event was being blown up in a Humvee, we might put them in the desert, just standing next to a Humvee, with no sound, maybe the sound of wind, and that may be enough to get their heart and skin conductance up, illustrating some anxiety.

“Gradually through basic habituation that anxiety goes down. All the while they are telling their story. Then you raise it a level, put them in the Humvee, then you put them in and add the sound of the engine, add the vibration, ask them to pull out on

the desert road.

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