News New and hopeful treatment ? JAMA ARTICLE : Virtual Reality and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

[binchilling]

Virtual Reality and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

This randomized clinical trial assesses whether active transcranial direct current stimulation plus virtual reality is effective in treating warzone-related PTSD compared with to sham stimulation plus virtual reality.

jamanetwork.com

Did anyone of us tried this ?

 

[Friday]

Fewer than 60 people on the planet have tried this treatment… so it’s unlikely anyone HERE was part of the 54 person study or initial focus group, but it’s an interesting article.

I know of quite a few grad students working on various VR APPLICATIONS for PTSD… but this is the first I’ve heard of VR+ECT much less VR+DEEP BRAIN stimulation. Which is wildly invasive, and profoundly risky. And could only be performed on soldiers without human rights advocates raising hell (as soldiers are not “people”, with inherent human rights, but “property” (legally speaking) they’re ideal test subjects). .

 

[Weemie]

Extremely skeptical, even DBS in patients where it is proven effective (like Parkinson's) carries pretty severe risks and an incidence of ~8%, which is not insignificant. PTSD has much better treatment alternatives with a much lower risk profile, like psilocybin therapy, that I would prefer the medical community focus on rolling out to a larger number of patients (and which can also, as @Friday mentioned, be studied more ethically).