WBA I Virtual Reality Goes to War: Applications for the Prevention, Assessment and Treatment of PTSD

Onlineseminar der SFU Weiterbildungsakademie

Virtual Reality Goes to War: Applications for the Prevention, Assessment and Treatment of PTSD
War places extreme physical, emotional, and psychological demands on those affected, with posttraumatic stress (PTS) emerging as a major healthcare challenge. This presentation explores how Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) and related VR-based tools are being applied to prevent, identify, and treat trauma in Service Members, Veterans, refugees, and children. Topics include direct VR therapy for PTSD, clinician-facilitated metaverse support groups, virtual play therapy for children, and mindfulness-based stress reduction. Current projects such as Virtual Ukraine highlight how innovative VR applications and Conversational AI can break down barriers to care, expand access, and provide effective trauma-focused interventions across diverse populations.
#PTSD, #VirtualReality, #ArtificialIntelligence, #VirtualHumanAgents

Date

09.06.2026, 18:00 – 20:00 Uhr, online über ZOOM

Content

War is perhaps one of the most challenging situations that a human being can experience. The physical, emotional, cognitive and psychological demands of a combat environment place enormous stress on even the best-prepared military personnel. Numerous reports indicate that the incidence of posttraumatic stress (PTS) in combat-exposed military personnel is creating a significant healthcare challenge. This situation has served to motivate research on how to better develop and disseminate evidence-based treatments for PTS and other related psychosocial conditions. In this regard, Virtual Reality delivered exposure therapy (VRET) for PTS is currently being used with consistent reports of positive outcomes. This presentation will begin with a review of how VR was first applied to the treatment of anxiety disorders in civilians via an exposure-based, extinction-learning theoretical model. From those precursor developments the presentation will then detail how VR applications are being designed and implemented across various points in the military deployment cycle to prevent, identify and treat combat and sexual trauma-related PTS in Service Members and Veterans. The ongoing „Virtual Ukraine“ (and budding Virtual Israel/Gaza) project will then be presented with a detailing of a spectrum of clinical VR applications that address four unique trauma-related clinical targets:
(1) Direct Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for trauma-focused PTSD treatment.
(2) Metaverse-enabled social support worlds that are clinician-facilitated to provide international access (using avatar-based engagement) to groups of people currently living in the affected regions and refugees in other areas.
(3) Treatment of Adverse Childhood Experiences in child victims of the conflicts that leverages a virtual version of the Play Therapy Sandtray approach (Virtual Sandtray) to help children express their trauma narrative within their own self-constructed virtual reality worlds
(4) VR-based training in Mindfulness and Meditative strategies for Stress Reduction

The talk will cover the challenges and progress attained by clinicians and VR developers in the design, development and dissemination of this treatment across diverse populations with unique needs. The theory, past/current research findings, and lessons learned with these approaches for breaking down barriers to care and promoting clinical efficacy will be discussed throughout the presentation. Finally, with the extended time allotted for this talk, I will present work that leverages Conversational AI to create an eMobile Virtual Human app (Battle Buddy) that is designed to serve as an emotional support and resource management system for persons suffering from PTSD.

Main Topics

• Virtual Reality (VR) as a clinical tool
• VR for the delivery of trauma-focused therapies
• VR therapy for PTSD due to Sexual trauma
• AI Virtual Human agents as mental health support tools delivered on a mobile device.