From cbc.ca:

A Quebec university is using computer wizardry to treat mental illness while forging Canada’s reputation as a leader in the emerging field of cyber-psychology.

The lab at the University of Quebec in Outaouais first used virtual reality techniques to study and treat simple phobias like the fear of flying.

A decade later, its researchers are targeting everything from pathological gambling to schizophrenia and, soon, post-traumatic stress disorder in Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

From emaxhealth.com:

Early and ongoing research suggests that “walking” through a Virtual Reality Grocery Store can benefit people with balance disorders.

The world’s only Virtual Reality Grocery Store, based in the Department of Otolaryngology at Pitt and UPMC, is like a life-size video game that projects 3-D, moving images of a grocery store onto three screens which surround a real shopping cart on a custom-built treadmill. A person operating the shopping cart can control his or her own speed and direction of travel while walking up and down aisles that display realistic-looking products.

The store has 18 aisles, each with an increasing level of difficulty. Easier aisles display larger products, like paper towels, while the more challenging aisles contain smaller products, like canned goods or tiny bottles of medicine.

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From itexaminer.com:

Intelligence Gaming has designed a unique, immersive cultural simulation (ICS) project used to train US troops deployed overseas.

The ICS is based on RealityV and is powered by a customised Adobe Flash Player 10 capable of running on multiple platforms, or in enhanced mode with a head-mounted display. The ICS project, which offers 360-degrees of video and eight binaural audio channels, allows users to interact with actors recorded in high-definition digital media. Trainees navigating their virtual environment are able to fully observe live action content that influences decision making in the field. Indeed, ICS tracks even the slightest movements and accurately renders perspective-correct audio and video to the head-mounted display.

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From orlandosentinel.com:

"All exposure therapy is helping someone face their fears," says Josh Spitalnick of Virtually Better, the Atlanta company that makes the virtual-reality therapy software.

Psychologists have been using virtual reality for about a decade, but the technology was, until recently, clunky and awkward.

No more. Now virtual reality looks like, well, reality.

For instance, now therapists can take a person who is afraid of heights, put the headset and goggles on him and place him on the 6-inch platform in the lab. With the headset on, he can walk to the edge of the platform and look down and feel as if he is on top of a 20-story building.

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From arstechnica.com (via slashdot.org):

You’d think being seriously wounded on the battlefield would be the most painful thing a soldier could go through, but the recovery from burns can take months of agonizing physical therapy that prolongs the suffering. In some cases, healing can be more painful than the original trauma. What if you could take patients away from their immediate surroundings when cleaning their burns or stretching the skin during physical therapy? A virtual reality game created to help patients deal with pain hopes to do just that.

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