This paper is a report on 5-year partnership between the Department of Psychiatry and Combat Stress (DP&CS) of the Military Institute of Medicine in Warsaw with the Virtual Reality Medical Center (VRMC) of San Diego, USA in implementation of VR technology in the area of protection of mental health of Polish Military Contingent's (PMC) soldiers and veterans who participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). The partnership was initiated by the VRMC that transferred free of charge to the DP&CS computer hardware along with dedicated software and provided training to the personnel in the field of the Graded-Exposure, Virtual-Reality-Facilitated, Biofeedback-Guided Treatment for Combat-PTSD. Initially this method was applied to all patients with combat related stress disorders, hospitalised in our clinic. Later on it was limited to PTSD and the VR therapy was based on a therapeutic link and patient's trust to the therapist. Control of arousal by a proper breathing pattern restored to those patients a sense of control over their emotions and facilitated deepened psychotherapeutic work. A strong point of the VR therapy was a possibility of grading the difficulty level of the VR exposed scenes. An excessively technical nature of this method was a source of reserve of the therapists towards this approach. Because of this the VR therapy should be used for treatment of PTSD patients only as additional and supporting one. Good results in PTSD treatment were obtained by a combination of the VR therapy with behavioural training.

Another area of cooperation between the DP&CS and the VRMC was an implementation of a short-term, collective VR Computer-Assisted Stress Inoculation Training for soldiers preparing for a deployment to Afghanistan. The results obtained indicate a short-term effectiveness of the training as a method of tension reduction. However, in the long-term perspective these results are ambiguous and they suggest a need of further research.

The latest chapter of research on application of VR technologies in activities of the DP&CS is utilisation of exposure to virtual war stressors to assess changes in the central nervous system, observed by means of PET-imaging, used as a predicator of resistance to battlefield stress in special forces' soldiers. This research is in progress.