Methods for treating first responders suffering from mental injuries have gone virtual, as new modalities blend technologies such as gaming with more traditional approaches to treatment.

Considered more holistic, the newer treatments in workers compensation mental injury claims can help provide a drug-free way to aid recovering first responders and can be more cost-effective for employers and insurers, experts say.

Virtual reality treatment can be especially useful for first responders, who are more likely to be subjected to “intense stress on an ongoing, kind of chronic long-term basis,” said Karen Thomas, Culpeper, Virginia-based vice president of clinical solutions for CorVel Corp. 

The new approaches are “absolutely on the rise” among the first-responder community, said Gerry Stanley, chief medical officer for Las Vegas-based Harvard MedTech, which produces virtual reality technology.

First responders can be “heavily traumatized” due to workplace exposure to violent or otherwise disturbing events, and the exposure can be isolated or manifest over time, he said.  

“It’s sort of death by a thousand papercuts,” Dr. Stanley said. “A lot of their calls can be microtraumas.”

With psychological injuries on the rise among first responders, more states have enacted mental injury workers comp presumption statutes for such workers, said Kenji Saito, Augusta, Maine-based president of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Just as training programs for police officers are being “gamified” to include virtual reality, simulated environments and augmented reality, it’s a natural progression that these technologies would be used to treat mental injuries suffered in the course of handling emergency calls, according to experts.

“It’s going to be a little easier for them to adopt because they already use it as part of the (job) training, so they can make that connection,” Dr. Saito said.

If virtual reality and similar treatment methods in workers comp are successful with traumatized first responders, they will likely be considered for other claimant populations, Dr. Saito said.

The newer technologies are most successful when used in coordination with other treatment, experts say.

Virtual reality is “always going to be most effective when it’s done in conjunction with some kind of talk therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy,” Ms. Thomas said.

Often, licensed therapists who are trained to deal with trauma oversee the virtual reality treatment, she said, and the therapist can help guide the injured worker through the experience, employing corresponding techniques such as meditation and visualization exercises.

“So, there is an education component, there is a meditation component that kind of helps set that or guide that individual how to start their day,” Ms. Thomas said.