Analysis of virtual reality contribution to treatment of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one on the most devastating psychological consequences of war that affects mental health of veterans. Medications and psychotherapy are common ways of dealing with this anxiety disorder. In the last couple of years virtual reality exposure therapy is introduced to the field of exposure based therapy. By helping patients to better reexperience and then reprocess the traumatic event virtual reality (VR) is improving their healing process. A short survey of existing VR applications used for PTSD treatment as well as other academic studies related to connection between VR technology and treatment of PTSD disease is presented in this article. We propose an implementation concept for new VR application based on virtual reality exposure method and oriented at specifics of Croatian homeland war.