STRIVE-ONR Project: Stress Resistance in Virtual Environments.

摘要

The STRIVE program is designed as an interactive/immersive narrative-based set of VR episodes that expose participants to events that have been reported by SMs with PTSD as emotionally challenging and in that context present resilience training skills and techniques by way of an Interactive Virtual Mentor (IVM). The project evolved from the Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) system at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies and aims to foster psychological resilience by creating a set of combat and ethically challenging simulations that can be used as contexts for the experiential learning of cognitive-behavioral emotional coping strategies in SMs prior to deployment. This process involves immersing and engaging SMs within a variety of virtual "missions" where they are confronted with emotionally challenging situations that are inherent in a combat environment. Interaction by SMs within such emotionally challenging scenarios aims to provide a more meaningful context in which to learn and practice psychoeducational and cognitive coping strategies that research suggests plays a supportive role in the psychological preparation for a combat deployment. To accomplish this, STRIVE has been designed as a multi-episode interactive narrative in VR, akin to being immersed within a "Band of Brothers" type storyline that spans a typical deployment cycle. We currently have an initial story arc of six episodes created that will be used in the research that is now being proposed. At the end of each of the graded 10-minute episodes, an emotionally challenging event occurs, designed in part from feedback provided by SMs undergoing PTSD VRET (e.g., seeing/handling human remains, direct threat to safety via an IED attack in a vehicle, moral challenges due to culturally relativistic events (wife beating), the death of a civilian child, death of a squad member, grief processing in theatre). A