Virtual Ukraine PTSD Exposure Therapy Project

The USC Institute for Creative Technologies, Medical VR Lab in partnership with Fountain Digital Labs, 8agora, Greenleaf Medical, The University of Bucharest, the Jessica Stone Lab, and the International Institute of Postgraduate Education in Kiev, Ukraine are creating a Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) PTSD treatment system for victims of trauma from the war in Ukraine. The system is being designed to provide trauma-focused therapy for civilians and warfighter and will deliver evidence-based care via our clinical partners in Kyiv (the International Institute of Postgraduate Education). The Virtual Ukraine VRET system is currently fundraising for long term development and clinical implementation and is being built off of the USC-ICT BRAVEMIND (Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan) software architecture. Here is a link to the donation site to support this project: https://soldierstrong.networkforgood..... The video presented here, produced by Fountain Digital Labs with Ukrainian developers, illustrates an early prototype development of one of 10 virtual worlds that have been envisioned to provide the much needed individualized and comprehensive treatment that is needed for this urgent challenge. In this case, it represents the experience of being in a bombed out village home, with the user hiding from Russian troops within the wreckage of a home. While still in the early stages of development for Ukrainian patient use, the BRAVEMIND system that this is based on is an evidence-based intervention for treating combat-related PTSD (Beidel et al., 2017, 2019; Difede et al., 2022; Rizzo et al., 2010, 2018, 2021; Rothbaum et al., 2014) and initial safety and feasibility testing of a version to address sexual trauma has also been successful (Loucks et al., 2019). The latest version of the BRAVEMIND system has been disseminated to over 50 USA clinical sites across the VA and in private settings, in addition to its use by Canadian, Australian, Danish, and Norwegian clinicians. The effort leverages the USC-ICT BRAVEMIND code-base to create Ukrainian-relevant contexts and content for use in clinical settings in Ukraine. This is seen as an economically-sound approach for creating a Ukraine-focused VR treatment system, leveraging the 18 years of iterative USC development of the BRAVEMIND system. As well, the use of Ukrainian and other Eastern European VR developers is seen as a user-centered design strategy that will maximize the authenticity of the VR therapeutic experience and promote clinical effectiveness. We are currently commencing fundraising to advance this system in partnership with the Soldier Strong Foundation, a 501c non-profit with a long history of charitable donations to provide care for victims of trauma (https://www.soldierstrong.org/). Queries as to how you can participate to support this effort can be sent to [email protected]